LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©lap*" 






^. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JOSEPH 



THE PRIME-MINISTER 



^A^^^ 



BY, 



The Rev. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D. 

MINISTER OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE, N. Y. CITY 







NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
1886 






THE REV. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR'S WORKS. 


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Daniel the Beloved. 


Moses the Law-Giver. 


David, King of Israel. 


Paul the Missionary. 


Elijah the Prophet. 


Peter the Apostle, 


Joseph the Prime-Minister. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 


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Copyright, 1886, by Harper & Brothers. 



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1 



PREFACE. 



THE general acceptance with which my former vokimes 
of this class have met, and the numerous testimonies 
to their usefulness with which I have been favored, have 
induced me to add another to the series. 

The story of Joseph is one of the first favorites of our 
childhood; and if, in the following pages, I have succeeded 
in turning it to useful account for the inspiration of the 
young, the support of those who are bearing the burden 
and heat of the meridian of life, or the solace of the aged, 
I shall be deeply grateful. 

Wm. M. Taylor. 

5 JVesf Thirty-fifth Street, 
N'ew York City, 



CONTENTS, 



Page 

I. The Fathers Favorite arid the Brothers' Censor, , 7 

II. Sold to the Ishmaelites 20 

III. Sold into Slavery 33 

IV. Tempted but Triumphant 48 

V. The Two Priso?iers 61 

VI. Elevation at Length 76 

VII. Public Ad^ninistration 91 

VIII. The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt 108 

IX. The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt 122 / 

X. The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt, , , 137 

XI. Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father 153 

XII. Jacob's Dying Prophecies 171 

XIII. Jacob's Funeral 190 

XIV. Joseph's Death 206 

XV. The Character and Career of Joseph 222 



JOSEPH THE PRIME-MINISTER. 



I. 

THE FATHER'S FA VORITE AND THE BROTHERS' 

CENSOR, 

Gen. xxxvii., i-ir. 

THE influence of Jacob's experience at Peniel was not 
limited to the brief time of its actual existence. That 
night was the water-shed of his life, marking the "hence- 
forth" from which he became another man. Till then he had 
been, in nature as well as in name, Jacob the Supplanter. 
While yet in his father's house he had taken a mean ad- 
vantage of Esau's necessity to get possession of the birth- 
right ; and notwithstanding the Bethel vision, the same dis- 
position had re-appeared in his dealings with Laban. He 
had, indeed, many good things about him, notably a rapid 
intelligence, great capacity for work, ready resourcefulness, 
and steady perseverance ; yet these were greatly vitiated by 
the cunning and unscrupulous selfishness to which they 
were all made to minister. He was markedly deficient in 
those qualities which give attractiveness to character, and 
we cannot see that he was animated by any great religious 
principle for at least the larger portion of his residence at 
Padan-aram. 

But the new name given to him by the angel at Peniel 



JOSEPH THE PRIME-MINISTER. 



I. 

THE FATHER'S FA VORITE AND THE BROTHERS' 

CENSOR. 

Gen. xxxvii., i-ii. 

THE influence of Jacob's experience at Peniel was not 
limited to the brief time of its actual existence. That 
night was the water-shed of his life, marking the "hence- 
forth'^ from which he became another man. Till then he had 
been, in nature as well as in name, Jacob the Supplanter. 
While yet in his father's house he had taken a mean ad- 
vantage of Esau's necessity to get possession of the birth- 
right; and notwithstanding the Bethel vision, the same dis- 
position had re-appeared in his dealings with Laban. He 
had, indeed, many good things about him, notably a rapid 
intelligence, great capacity for work, ready resourcefulness, 
and steady perseverance ; yet these were greatly vitiated by 
the cunning and unscrupulous selfishness to which they 
were all made to minister. He was markedly deficient in 
those qualities which give attractiveness to character, and 
we cannot see that he was animated by any great religious 
principle for at least the larger portion of his residence at 
Padan-aram. 

But the new name given to him by the angel at Peniel 



8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

was given to a new man, and for the remaining fifty years 
of his life the Supplanter in him disappears and the Prince 
of God comes into view. Henceforth he is guileless as Na- 
thaniel. Deceit in him gives place to truth, and duplicity 
to singleness of mind. As one has very well expressed it, 
" Spiritually he halts when before he would have put down 
his foot unfaltering. He hears of the indignity done to 
Dinah, and * holds his peace/ Simeon and Levi avenge the 
wrong by a deed of shameless deceit and cruelty, and he 
says to them, ^ Ye have troubled me to make me to stink 
among the inhabitants of the land.' A still more shameless 
deed than the one done at Shechem is committed in his own 
household, and all that is said of him is that Mie heard it.' 
Trial follows trial, bereavement succeeds bereavement; un- 
der severe and protracted discipline the higher spiritual nat- 
ure grows and ripens till at the close the piety of Abraham 
and Isaac — their faith in God and in his special promises — 
shines forth in Jacob in unclouded beauty." "^ 

From Peniel, after his reconciliation to Esau and peaceful 
parting from him, Jacob went to Succoth, and thence to She- 
chem, where Abraham reared his first altar in the land of 
promise. Here, as it would seem, he meant to take up his 
permanent abode, for he bought a piece of ground and dug 
in it that well which is now imperishably associated with one 
of the sweetest incidents in the life of our Saviour, and 
which remains till this day an object of deepest interest to 
every traveller in the Holy Land. But the treacherous treat- 
ment of the sons of Shechem by Simeon and Levi in the 
matter of Dinah drove him from that beautiful valley, and 
under the direction of God he went first to Bethel, where 
Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin, and afterwards to 
Hebron, where his father Isaac was still living. 

* Dr. William Hanna in " The Patriarchs," p. i6. 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor. 9 

It is at this point we take up the story in the chapter now 
before us, and begin the life of Joseph ; and it may surprise 
some of you that I should speak of Isaac as surviving till 
this date, inasmuch as the account of his death and burial 
is given at the close of the thirty-fifth chapter, and so pre- 
cedes the narrative on which we are now entering. But in 
reality the death of Isaac did not take place until twelve 
years after Joseph was sold into slavery, and the account of 
it is inserted where we find it, in order to give completeness 
to that section or subdivision of the history which treats 
especially of Isaac. If you examine the book cf Genesis 
with care you will discover that it consists of eleven sections, 
nine of which begin with the phrase "These are the genera- 
tions of," and one with the words " This is the book of the 
generations of.'' These may have been — indeed probably 
were — ancient documents, existing long before the book 
itself was put together by Moses ; but he, under divine guid- 
ance, used them and endorsed them, so that we may rely on 
their veracity. Now the book about Isaac begins with the 
19th verse of the 25th chapter, and ends with the 29th verse 
of the 35th chapter. Naturally, therefore, it includes the ac- 
count of his death and burial, and concludes with it. It is 
followed, in the 36th chapter, with the generations of Ish- 
mael, and in the 37th with those of Jacob, who, now that he 
has returned to Canaan and has become a son of Abraham, 
not according to the flesh merely, but in faith and character, 
is for the first time recognized in this formal way as the 
head of the covenant people. But in giving the needful de- 
tails about Jacob, the chronicler goes back to things which 
occurred before the death of Isaac, and, therefore, to avoid 
confusion, as well as to get a clear idea of the circumstances 
of Joseph's boyhood, it may be well for us to go a little into 
detail. 

According, then^ to the commonly received chronology, 



lo Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Jacob was 97 years old when he returned from Padan- 
aram, and Isaac was 157. At the same date Joseph was a 
boy of six. When our story opens he w^as a lad of 17. Isaac 
w^as 168, and Jacob 108. Now, when Isaac died his days 
were an hundred and fourscore years, so that he must have 
lived at Hebron twelve years after Joseph was sold into 
slavery by his brethren. If, then, we allow six years for the 
sojourn of Jacob at Shechem and Bethel before he came to 
Hebron, we will get the result^ conjectural, indeed, but still 
probable, that Joseph lost his mother Rachel before he was 
twelve years old, and that he lived for at least five years in 
Hebron in the neighborhood of his grandfather Isaac. 

These facts will help us to reproduce in our imagination 
the early years of that wonderful boy whose history has 
charmed every reader — the oldest as well as the youngest — 
by its simple naturalness, its undying interest, and its "pen- 
etrating pathos." At the head of one encampment was the 
venerable Isaac, quiet, retiring, unobtrusive in his disposition 
as of yore, withal frail with age and enfeebled by disease, 
and so not able to take much active part in the arrangement 
of affairs ; but all the more at leisure, because of that, to give 
some affectionate attention to the motherless boy, in whom 
he recognized the heir of the birthright which Reuben had 
forfeited, and to whom, therefore, he would be drawn by a 
peculiar attraction. Who can tell how much Joseph received 
of religious instruction and of never-to-be-forgotten truth 
from the lips of his meditative grandsire } Is it a mere 
fancy which supposes that in these early years Joseph 
learned from Isaac the wonderful story of Moriah, and so 
had begotten in him that faith in the covenant of his God, 
and in the nearness of Jehovah to him in every time of trial 
and temptation, by which he was sustained in later life ? I 
am no painter, but if I were I should like to try my hand at 
the portrayal of the young Joseph sitting at the feet of the 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor, ii 

blind old Isaac, and listening with wonder to the recital of 
his experience on that eventful day when he was rescued 
from sacrifice by the angeFs interference, and had his first 
insight into the world beyond. 

At the head of the other encampment was Jacob, with the 
Peniel glow still upon his character, if not also on his face, 
and his heart chastened and saddened by the death of his 
beloved Rachel, yet finding a sweet solace in the baby Ben- 
jamin, whom she had left behind, and even more in her el- 
dest son, to whom the birthright now legitimately belonged. 
That fact gave him at first, as I suppose, importance in his 
father's eyes, and out of that and the winsomeness and in- 
telligence of the boy himself grew the partiality which he so 
unwisely manifested for him. 

But in the one encampment of Jacob there were four 
divisions, forming not separate households, indeed, but yet 
far more dangerous, so far as the preservation of harmony 
was concerned, than if they had been entirely distinct. 
These were composed of Leah and her sons, Zilpah and 
her sons, Bilhah and her sons, and the sons of Rachel ; and 
from what we learn elsewhere of Joseph's ten half-brothers, 
we may be sure that they had little scruple in riding rough- 
shod over the feelings and wishes of any one who seemed in 
the least degree to stand in their way. This disposition of 
his brethren, added to his own motherless condition, would 
send Joseph much in upon himself, and make him, from his 
precocity in his experience of adversity, a welcome compan- 
ion to his father. And little harm might have come of that 
if Jacob had not been unwise in the manifestation of his 
preference. One would have thought that the recollection 
of his own experience might have prevented him from falling 
into such a mistake. He might have asked himself how he 
had liked the favoritism of his father for Esau, or what good 
had come out of Rebekah's preference for himself above 



12 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Esau. But, untaught by the consequences of the folly of 
his own parents, he repeats the same himself; for he set 
Joseph over the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, giv- 
ing him the charge of them in their daily labor, whether as 
shepherds or as agriculturists. No doubt Joseph was par- 
ticularly wise for his years ; for that, according to some, is 
the meaning of the phrase, "a son of the old ones,'' here 
translated " a son of old age ;" but still, to put the younger 
over the older was pre-eminently foolish, and could tend 
only to provoke enmity in those who were thus humiliated. 

This feeling w^ould be intensified by his giving to Jo- 
seph a peculiar dress which was intended to mark his 
superiority. In our version it is called "a coat of many 
colors," as if its peculiarity consisted in its variegated ap- 
pearance. But modern scholars are of opinion that the 
words describe " a tunic reaching to the extremities," or, as 
in the margin of the Revised Version, "a long garment with 
sleeves," and so refer to the shape rather than to the fabric ; 
though from the fact that on one of the Egyptian tombs at 
Beni Hassan there is a representation of a train of captives 
who are clad in party-colored garments, it is not impossible 
that the tunic here specified was ornamented with many-col- 
ored stripes. In any case it was meant as a badge of dis- 
tinction and superiority for Joseph as the heir of the birth- 
ri^El and the favorite of his father, and so the very sight of 
It imbittered the hearts of his brethren against him. 

The evil was aggravated, also, by the conduct of Joseph 
^limself, "for he brought unto his father their evil report." 
^lis has generally been understood as implying that Joseph 
was a petty tale-bearer, and carried to his father accounts of 
the doings of his brethren, which were designed by him to 
get them into trouble. But I cannot quite accept that view 
of the case. My reading of the history is that Jacob set 
Joseph over the sons of the handmaids, and that the report 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor. 13 

which he carried was that which was required of him in his 
capacity of overseer. It was a most unwise thing in Jacob 
to put Joseph into such a position ; but, being in it, he had 
to be faithful and give an account of the manner in which 
each performed his duties, and that irritated his brethren 
and stirred them up to intense hatred of him. 

Then matters were made still worse by his dreams. He 
told them with the utmost simplicity, but they carried their 
interpretation on their face, and the repetition of the same 
forecast, under different symbolism, intensified the provoca- 
tion. His brethren were in no mood to do obeisance to 
him, and even his father, though he resolved to keep watch 
and see if God had really been revealing the future to his 
son, blamed him for what seemed to be his pride. 

It is not said in the record that his dreams were prophet- 
ic, and some have preferred to believe that they came like 
any ordinary visions, taking their shape from the general 
current of Joseph's thoughts when he was awake. If that 
be the correct view of the case, then Joseph must have been 
of a most ambitious nature, and the knowledge that he was 
now the heir of the birthright must have so filled his imag- 
ination as to give definiteness and coherence even to his 
dreams. That is not an impossibility — and if any one 
chooses to accept such an account of the matter, I see noth- 
ing either rationalistic or unbelieving in his doing so. But 
still, that view scarcely seems to me to be in harmony with 
the beautiful humility which comes out in Joseph's charac- 
ter, and appears to be inconsistent with the simple naivete 
manifested by him in telling his dreams to his brethren. 
The ambitious man is invariably a silent man. He keeps 
his own forecasts to himself. He does not make common 
talk of his schemes and his dreams. He will not "shew 
his hand " in the game, lest he should give another the 
means of defeating that for which he designs to play. 



14 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Therefore the fact that Joseph told his dreams to his breth- 
ren is an indication to me that there was no ambition in his 
soul. They were not the crystallization into the symbols of 
visions, of the thoughts which were filling his mind all 
through his waking hours, but came, as I believe, in the way 
of divine revelation, and were among the early links in that 
chain of providences which ultimately led the family of 
Jacob to Egypt, where they could better grow into a nation 
than they could among the Canaanites. But however that 
may have been, the very telling of them inflamed the hatred 
of his brethren against him, and moved them to take meas- 
ures to put him out of the way. 

Before we follow them in the carrying out of their mali- 
cious intentions, however, let us pause here, and glean a few 
of the lessons which we may learn from this narrative for 
our daily guidance. 

In the first place, then, w^e are taught here the evil of fa- 
voritism in the family. The balance, as between the differ- 
ent children in the same household, must be held evenly by 
the parents. They may have different dispositions, and there 
may be that in one which is more attractive than anything 
in another. One may be brighter, or more amiable, or more 
companionable than another, but before the discipline of the 
family they ought to be all on a level. They are all alike 
the children of the father, and should be dealt with by him 
on principles of the strictest equity. It is true that in some 
respects their differences of disposition will require differ- 
ences of treatment, but they should be all kept on an equal- 
ity. No one ought to be the "pet'' of either father or 
mother, for the *' pet " is apt to become petted, haughty, and 
arrogant towards the others ; while the shovv'ing of constant 
favor to him alienates the affections of the rest, both from 
him and from the parents, "/i" that you^ Pet V^ said a father 
from his bedroom to a little one who stood at the door in 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor. 15 

the early morning knocking for admission. *^ JVo, it isnl 
jPet, ifs only me^^ replied a sorrowful little voice ; and that 
was the last of "pet'' in that family. See what mischief it 
occasioned here in Jacob's household ! No doubt there 
were special dangers in such a case as his, for there were 
four families in one, and it must have been hard to preserve 
harmony at all ; but that only made it the more important 
that every irritating influence should be, as far as possible, 
removed, and it was the greatest folly in Jacob to make 
such a display of his preference for Joseph. We see the 
same thing in even a worse form in the household of Isaac, 
where each parent had a favorite, and both worked at cross- 
purposes. Such a system of partiality usually ends in the 
"spoiling" — to use the common but expressive word — of 
the favorite himself; and even where, as in Joseph's case, 
that danger is escaped, it alienates from him the other mem- 
bers of the family, and provokes them to insubordination. 
Above and beyond most other things, therefore, family gov- 
ernment must be just, and the balance must be held by the 
parent with the most unswerving impartiality. 

But, in the second place, we may learn from this narrative 
how bitter is the antagonism of the wicked to the righteous 
in the world. The partiality of Jacob for Joseph furnished 
the occasion for the hatred of his brethren, and is to be un- 
hesitatingly condemned ; but the real root of it was deeper, 
and is to be traced to the fact that Joseph would not consent 
to be one of them, and join them in the doing of things' 
which they knew that their father would condemn. He 
held himself aloof from their wickednesses. His conscience 
was tender, his heart v/as pure, his will was firm. He was 
a Puritan and they were regardless, and they chose to set 
down his non-conformity to pride rather than to principle, 
and persecuted him accordingly. They supposed that his 
refusal to identify himself with them was caused by his think- 



1 6 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ing himself superior to Ihem, and they retaliated by break- 
ing off all intercourse with him ; for when it is said that 
'' they could not speak peaceably unto him," or, as the 
phrase literally is, " they could not say salaam to him," the 
meaning virtually is, in modern parlance, that they " cut " 
him, and treated him most disrespectfully and discourte- 
ously. 

But have we nothing like this in our modern life ? It 
may not be very common between brothers, though, alas ! 
it is not quite unknown even between them ; but go into our 
schools, our colleges, our stores, or our workshops, and you 
may frequently find that the most unpopular scholars or 
students or clerks or artisans are those who hold them- 
selves aloof from the excesses, the follies, or the sins of the 
rest. Their presence is a constant protest against the do- 
ings of the others ; their conduct is a continuous condemna- 
tion of that of the others, and they are hated simply because 
of that. The Athenians became tired of hearing Aristides 
called " the just," and they banished him to get rid of that 
which was disagreeable ; so those who are unprincipled be- 
come intolerant of the integrity of the upright who are work- 
ing at their side, and do everything in their power to make 
them uncomfortable. There is an immense amount of petty 
persecution of this sort going on in all our colleges, commer- 
cial establishments, and factories, of which the principals 
and the great world seldom hear, but which shows us that 
the human nature of to-day is in its great features identical 
with that which existed many centuries ago in the family of 
Jacob. What then ? Are the upright to yield ? are they to 
abate their protest ? are they to become even as the others ? 
No ; for that would be to take the leaven out of the mass ; 
that would be to let evil become triumphant, and so that 
must never be thought of. Let the persecuted in these ways 
hold out. Let them neither retaliate, nor recriminate, nor 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor. 17 

carry evil reports, but let them simply hold on, believing 
that "he that endureth overcometh." Having done all 
things, let them '^ sfand,^^ and in the end those who now de- 
cry them will be compelled to do them honor. Yes, these 
two dreams of Joseph are here for just such as those whom 
I have been now describing, and they tell them as they told 
him, that by-and-by — it may be after long suffering and 
much privation, but yet ultimately — the sheaves of their 
persecutors will make obeisance to their sheaves, and those 
who now '^send them to Coventry" will yet be glad to do 
homage at their feet. 

But now, in the last place, the case of Joseph here brings 
up the whole question of our responsibility in regard to 
what we see or hear that is evil in other people, and it may 
be well to say a few words concerning that. I have come 
to the conclusion that Joseph was by his father placed in 
formal charge of his brothers, and that it was his duty to 
give a truthful report concerning them, even as to-day an 
overseer is bound in justice to his employer to state pre- 
cisely the kind of service which those under him are render- 
ing. That is no tale-bearing; that is simple duty. But 
now, suppose we are invested with no such charge over 
another, and yet we see him do something that is deplorably 
wrong, what is our duty in such a case ? Are we bound to 
carry the report to his father or to his employer, or must we 
leave things alone and let them take their course? The 
question so put is a delicate one and very difficult to handle. 
But I think I see two or three things that cast some little 
light upon it. 

In the first place we are not bound by any law, human or 
divine, to act the part of a detective on our neighbor and 
lay ourselves out for the discovery of that in him which is 
disreputable or dishonest. AVe must have detectives in the 
department of police, and they are very servjiceable there ; 



i8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

but that every one of us should be closely watching every 
other to see what evil he can discover in him is intolerable, 
and we should discourage in all young people every tend- 
ency to such peering Paul-pryism. 

Then, in the second place, when, without any such delib- 
erate inspection on our part^ w^e happen to see that which is 
wrong, we should, in the way in which we treat the case, 
make a distinction between a crime and a vice, A crime is 
that wdiich is a violation of the civil law; a vice is that 
W'hich, without violating the civil law, is a sin against God. 
Now suppose that what we see is a crime — the man, let us 
say, is robbing his employer — then my clear duty, if I would 
not be 71 pariiceps crimtnis, is to give information to his mas- 
ter, and let him deal with the case as he sees fit. On the 
other hand, if the evil is a vice — say, for example, sensuality 
or the like, which does not, directly at least, interfere with 
his efficiency as a servant — then I must deal with himself 
alone. My duty in such a case is to hold my peace to oth- 
ers, and to speak faithfully to the man himself. If he hear 
me, then I have gained him ; but if he refuse to hear me, 
then I may say to him that, as he has chosen to pay no heed 
to my expostulation, I shall feel it my duty to inform his 
father of the matter ; and then, having acted out that deter- 
mination, I may consider that my responsibility in regard to 
him is at an end, unless, in God's providence, there is given 
me some other opening through which to approach him. 

These principles seem to me to be very plain and very 
practicable ; but I can go no further in the matter, and must 
say that, for the rest, each should do as occasion serves. 
We cannot do wrong, however, to follow the wise advice of 
Lawson, as thus given in connection with the passage on 
which we have been commenting : " When we see any man's 
children disgracing and hurting themselves, if we cannot by 
our own influence persuade them to refrain, we will deserve 



The Father's Favorite and the Brothers' Censor. 19 

the thanks of their parents by letting them know how much 
they are dishonored, and what grief is likely to be brought 
upon them by their children if they are not checked. If 
parents are to admonish or to correct their children for bad 
behavior, it is necessary for them to inspect their conduct ; 
but they cannot be always under their own eyes, and there- 
fore they ought to reckon themselves indebted to the persons 
who assist them, by prudent and seasonable information, 
in this part of their duty. Yet great caution must be used 
in this office of love that we may not bring upon ourselves 
the guilt and reproach of officious interference in other men's 
matters."^ 

The whole thing lies in that phrase, "this office of love." 
It is to be performed in affection, not to make mischief, but 
to save a soul ; and if we keep that motive uppermost we 
shall not be likely to go far astray. '^ Brethren, if a man be 
overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one 
in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also 
be tempted.'' Take the gospel principles underlying that 
command and apply them to the case which we have sup- 
posed, then you will reach its true solution. 

* *' Lectures on the History of Joseph," by George Lawson, D.D., p. 3. 



II. 

SOLD TO THE ISHMAELITES. 
Gen. xxxvii., 12-35. 

WHEN envy has fully formed its purpose of cruelty, 
it very speedily sees and seizes an opportunity for 
carrying it through. The great dramatist, indeed, has rep- 
resented one of the most unscrupulous of his characters as 
excusing himself after this fashion : *^ How oft the sight of 
means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done ;" but then it is 
only the envious and malicious man who is on the outlook 
for means to do ill deeds, and therefore it is to him only 
that the perception of them offers a temptation. If King 
John had not been wishing to make away with Arthur, the 
presence of Hubert would not have suggested to him that 
he had found a fit instrument to do what he desired. Just 
as love keens the vision to such a degree that it sees ways 
of service that are invisible to others, so hate quickens the 
perception, and finds an occasion for its gratification in 
things that would have passed unnoticed by others. The 
brothers of Joseph, therefore, being filled with envy towards 
him, soon had an opportunity of working their will upon 
him, and they seized it with an eagerness which showed 
how intensely they hated him. 

They had gone with their flocks to Shechem, where, as we 
saw in our last discourse, their father had purchased a par- 
cel of ground, in which he had digged a well. This place, 
now known as the valley of Nablus, is perhaps the most 
fertile as well as the most beautiful in all Palestine. It was 



Y 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 21 

more than two days' journey north from Hebron, where Ja- 
cob now had his abode ; and perhaps the recent feud be- 
tween the Shechemites and his sons, in the matter of Dinah, 
made the patriarch somewhat anxious as to their welfare. 
He had already had bitter experience of the hasty and vin- 
dictive disposition of some of the members of his family, 
and it is quite likely that he feared lest they should become 
again embroiled with the inhabitants of Shechem. There- 
fore he sent Joseph, saying, " Go, I pray thee, see whether 
it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks, and 
bring me word again." Such a mission seems to us, on the 
first blush of it, at once too important and too dangerous for 
so young a man. But Joseph had already manifested great 
ability, and secured his father's confidence ; and Dr. Thom- 
son tells us that among the modern Arab tribes it is not un- 
usual for individuals to go a long way "from their encamp- 
ments on errands often perilous."* Perhaps Joseph had 
been sent forth on similar commissions more than once be- 
fore, and so there would be on this occasion the less misgiv- 
ing, either on Jacob's part to bid him go, or on Joseph's to 
set out. But, in any case, though their parting seemed a 
commonplace matter, and they expected to be reunited in 
a few days at the longest, yet they did not look upon each 
others' faces again for more than twenty years* Could they 
have foreseen all that was before them in that long interval, 
with what different emotions would they have bidden each 
other farewell ! But for them, as it is still for us, the future 
was mercifully concealed, and they had to go forward into it 
only one step at a time. 

When Joseph arrived at Shechem he discovered that his 
brethren had gone from their usual pasturage with their 
flocks ; and when he was wandering about in search of them, 

* "The Land and the Book : Central Palestine and Phoenicia," p. 169. 



22 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

uncertain what he should do, he was found by an obliging 
stranger, who told him that he had heard his brethren say, 
"Let us go to Dothan.'' Therefore he went some twelve 
miles farther after them, and came to that place the name 
of which signifies " two wells," and the situation of which is 
marked by Eusebius as twelve miles to the north of Samaria. 
It has been discovered in modern times by Van de Velde 
and Dr. Robinson, still bearing its ancient name, and it is 
described as located at the south end of a plain of the rich- 
est pasturage, four or five miles south-west of Jenin, and sep- 
arated only by a swell or tier of hills from the plain of Es- 
draelon. Near it are now large under-ground cisterns, such 
as in that country are apt to become dry, and these are of 
the same sort as the pit into which, as we shall by-and-by see, 
Joseph was put. Even to this day it has the best pasturage 
in all the region, and in that fact, though the narrative is si- 
lent upon the point, we have probably the reason why the 
sons of Jacob came to it at this time ; for, as Hack'ett sug- 
gests, "it is the very place which herdsmen, such as they 
were, would naturally seek, after having exhausted the sup- 
plies of their previous pasture-ground.""^ But perhaps most 
interesting of all, this Dothan is on the present line of travel 
between the country to the east of the Jordan and Egypt : 
and Mr. Tristram speaks of having met there ^' a long cara- 
van of mules and asses, laden, on their way from Damascus 
to Egypt," so that the whole story is confirmed by most mi- 
nute correspondencies between the ancient record and the 
modern locality. 

In the immediate neighborhood there is a fountain, and 
Thomson suggests that the brothers might have watered 
their flocks thereat, or might have been seated round it 
on the grass when they caught their first glimpse of Joseph 

* See American Edition of Smith's " Dictionary," art. Dothan. 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 23 

from afar. But the sight only crystallized their envy into 
purpose, and determined them to wreak their vengeance on 
him. They were far from home. There was no one to in- 
terfere with them, or to bear testimony against them. They 
would never have a better opportunity of putting him out of 
the way, and no one would be the wnser. Therefore they 
said one to another — that is, the suggestion sprung up, as it 
were, simultaneously among them, and w^as not due to any 
one more than another, but was the spontaneous ejaculation 
of all at once — "Behold, this dreamer cometh ! Come now, 
therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit ; 
and we will say, ^ Some evil beast hath devoured him j and 
we shall see what will become of his dreams !' " Still harp- 
ing on his dreams ! But why should they thus stultify them- 
selves ? If there was nothing in the dreams, they were ut- 
terly beneath their notice ; but if God's revelation was in 
them, it was beyond their power to frustrate them. Thus in 
either case it was useless for them to attempt to do anything 
about them. But their blood was up. Joseph had been 
put over them, and had humiliated them with their father, 
and he must be got rid of So they said, " Let us slay him !" 
How true the words of the Apostle : " He that hateth his 
brother is a murderer !*' and how natural for an infuriated 
and selfish man it is to take '^ the way of Cain," and travel 
along it to the bitter end ! 

But in the present instance there was one honest effort 
made to prevent mischief, and it was made by hirn from 
whom it might have been least expected. For Reuben had, 
as a punishment for his grievous and revolting sin, been de- 
prived of the birthright, and it might have been supposed 
that he would have been the most implacable of them all 
towards Joseph, who had been put into his place. But his 
was a better nature, with all its faults, than that evinced by 
Simeon and Levi, and before the history closes we shall 



24 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

have again occasion to remark on the chivalry which he 
showed. Yet the good in him was spasmodic and intermit- 
tent. He was too much a creature of mere impulse, and so 
he came in at last for the characterization from his father, 
" Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." In the present 
emergency he showed his prudence by seeming to fall in 
with the general sentiment of his brethren, while at the same 
time he sought to keep it from doing mischief. He boarded 
the train which he could not arrest, but he boarded it with 
the purpose of ultimately controlling it and so preventing a 
catastrophe. The motive was good, but I am not quite so 
sure about the policy. It savors a little too much of worldly 
wisdom for me, and little good came out of it in the end. 
We have seen it tried here often enough in politics, and al- 
most always with this result, that the well-meaning men who 
have gone into a questionable movement under the idea that 
they could thereby guide it into something that would be at 
least harmless, have been themselves outwitted and befooled. 
It would have been just about as easy for Reuben to have 
stood out against the persecution of Joseph altogether as it 
was for him to protest against the shedding of his blood, and 
it might have been equally efficacious. At any rate it would 
have exonerated him from the guilt which they all alike ulti- 
rnately incurred. 

His plan was to deliver Joseph, but in a way that was it- 
self deceptive, for he seemed to be doing one thing while he 
was really seeking another. His proposal was that they 
should put Joseph into a pit. That to them looked to be a 
refinement on their cruelty, for it left him to starve to death, 
while they had meant that he should be slain out of hand. 
As such, therefore, it commended itself to their acceptance. 
But his secret intention was to come back by himself when 
the others should be out of the way, and then take him out 
and return with him to his father. It was well meant, and 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 25 

not very badly planned either ; but then it required that a 
very careful watch should be maintained, and just there the 
instability of Reuben's character came in to mar it all ; for, 
thinking that now the crisis was past, he went away, and took 
no further oversight of the matter, and in his absence it was 
all upset. For the moment, however, it looked as if he had 
succeeded, for the others accepted his suggestion, and after 
stripping Joseph of his hated coat, they put him into one of 
those cisterns which were so common in Palestine, and which, 
when dry, were sometimes, as in the case of Jeremiah, used 
as a prison. Lieutenant Anderson, of the Palestine Explo- 
ration Enterprise, thus writes regarding them : "The numer- 
ous rock-hewn cisterns that are found everywhere would fur- 
nish a suitable pit in which they might have thrust him j and 
as these cisterns are shaped like a bottle, with a narrow 
mouth, it would be impossible for any one imprisoned within 
it to extricate himself without assistance. These cisterns are 
now all cracked and useless ; they are, however, the most 
undoubted evidences that exist of the handiwork of the in- 
habitants in ancient times." "^ 

But what of Joseph all this time ? There is no word in 
the narrative here to tell us how he felt. Only one glimpse 
of him do we get, and that is long afterwards, when his 
brothers were in the Egyptian prison, and they said one to 
another, " We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in 
that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us 
and we would not hear."t But what a glimpse that is, and 
how much it reveals ! First, when they proposed to slay 
him, we can see him mutely appeal, with all his heart in his 
face, for mercy ; then, when they yielded to Reuben's sug- 
gestion, we can hear his piercing and passionate cry as the 

* ** The Land and the Book : Central Palestine and Phoenicia," p. 168. 
t Gen. xlii., 21. 

2 



26 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

prospect of his being left there all alone to perish of hunger 
grows definite and distinct before him ; and then, when they 
lowered him into his dark and dank and dreary prison-house, 
and the memory of his father rushes in upon his spirit, the 
tears, till then pent up, begin to flow, and the big, bursting sobs 
convulse his frame. But by-and-by there comes a calm, for 
he is in no greater extremity than his grandsire was that day 
when he was delivered by the beneficent angel, and was con- 
strained to say, " Jehovah-Jireh — the Lord wuU provide." 
He is no more hardly bestead than his father had been 
when he feared to meet with Esau, and, haply for him, too, 
the angel of Peniel might have a blessing! Was not God 
as near to him as he had been to them ? So, after the par- 
oxysm came the faith, for the pit was not hidden from Jeho- 
vah, and in some way there would be an outlet. Thus I 
please myself with the persuasion that Joseph, though in the 
pit, was still a prisoner of hope, and that after the first spasm 
of his grief was passed he could and did turn to Him from 
whom his dreams had come, and who would yet in some 
way, for his own glory, bring them to pass. 

But while he was thus wrestling with his great affliction 
his brethren sat down to eat. It was heartless work, and 
one wonders how they could take any enjoyment in their food 
when they had thus consigned their brother to a lingering 
death ; but there are depths of depravity in human nature 
which are absolutely appalling, and this is one of them. 
Alas ! what possibilities of evil there are in us all unless 
we are restrained by God's grace or regenerated by God's 
spirit ! But while they were eating, a caravan of merchants 
journeying along that route from Gilead to Egypt, of which 
we have already spoken as passing by Dothan, made their 
appearance, and Judah at once conceived the idea of getting 
a profit out of the business, and ridding themselves of their 
brother, too, by selling him into slavery. They immediately 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 27 

agreed to this new proposal, and so for twenty pieces of 
silver — about fifteen dollars of our money — they sold him 
to the traders, who are here called Ishmaelites and Midian- 
ites, either because these had already become the generic 
names for merchants, or because they were the descendants 
of those sons of Abraham who, nearly two hundred years be- 
fore, had gone out to make their own way in the world. 

The sequel is soon told. Reuben, returning to the pit, 
was grievously disappointed, and rent his clothes with a 
grief as violent as it was short-lived. The others, feeling it 
necessary to give some account of Joseph's disappearance 
to their father, took the exasperating coat and dipped it in 
the blood of a kid and brought it to Jacob, and said, " This 
have we found : know now whether it be thy son's coat or 
no." The effect was terrible; the patriarch was over- 
whelmed with sorrow, for he knew the coat perfectly, and 
the story seemed to be so well confirmed that he said, "Jo- 
seph is without doubt rent in pieces." They tried to com- 
fort him, but it was all in vain, and no wonder, considering 
who the consolers were. Reuben could have told him all 
the truth, but that would only have put him into the deeper 
agony of suspense ; and therefore, perhaps out of kindness, 
he preferred to let his father rest in the false certainty that 
Joseph was dead. Or it may be that in putting the matter 
thus we are doing Reuben too much honor, for it is possible 
that he feared for his own safety if he should do as Joseph 
had done and tell his brothers' evil report. But surely this 
was a case in which it was a clear duty to tell all the truth, 
no matter whom it shamed. 

Now, leaving Joseph for the time in the hands of the 
slave-merchants, let us lift out of this narrative, with which 
we have all been familiar from our childhood, some impor- 
tant lessons for the regulation of our manhood. And in the 
first place we may be reminded by it of the uncertainties 



28 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

that characterize our human existence. How true it is that 
we know not what a day may bring forth ! Joseph goes out 
on his father's errand and never more returns to his fatl^er's 
house — does not see his father again, in fact, for twenty-two 
years. Of course the crime of his brothers was the cause of 
this long separation between him and his venerable parent. 
But how often similar things occur even among ourselves I 
Some yeafs ago a little boy was stolen from his home in Phil- 
adelphia, and though every means that affection could suggest 
or professional skill could devise have been used for his dis- 
covery, the mystery has never been cleared up, so that to this 
hour his parents are in most horrible suspense. In our own 
city, too, scarcely a week elapses without the announcement 
that some one has disappeared from home and business, and 
very frequently nothing more is heard of him. But, apart 
from such occurrences, which may be traced to the cunning 
and malignity of wicked men, and which are a disgrace to 
our much boasted civilization, how often it happens, in the 
simple providence of God, and without blame to any one, 
that those who part in the morning with the hope of meeting 
again in a very short while never see each other more on 
earth ! The street accident causes death ; or the sudden 
outbreak of fire in the building in which their office hours 
are spent cuts off all possibility of escape, and they are 
burned to ashes; or a panic in a crowded place of amuse- 
ment which they visited has caused a great loss of life, and 
they are numbered among the victims ; or a railroad col- 
lision has smashed the train in which they were passengers, 
and they are reported among the dead ; or, without any such 
catastrophe, they have simply yielded to a sudden paroxysm 
of illness and passed within the veil. Who knows not how 
frequently such things are occurring in the midst of us, so 
that, as we have lately had occasion again and again to say, 
the proverb is verified that it is "the unexpected that hap- 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 29 

pens." What then ? Are we to have our hearts forever 
darkened with the shadow of the possibihty of such things 
coming to us? No; for that would be to make our lives 
continually miserable ; but the lesson is that we should be 
ever ready to respond to the call of God, and should take 
short views of things by living, as nearly as possible, a day 
at a time. We need not borrow trouble on the strength of 
the uncertainty to which I have referred, for "sufficient unto 
the day is the evil thereof;'' but we ought to be taught by 
it to finish every day's work in its own day, since its lesson 
is, "Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not 
what a day may bring forth." 

But, in the second place, we may see from this narrative 
that the beginning of sin is like the letting out of water. 
The aperture is small at first, but the force of the current in- 
creases the size of the outlet, and that in its turn makes the 
stream larger and stronger ; or, to put it in language without 
any figure, one sin begets another, so that what began in 
envy leads to murder, and that again gives birth to false- 
hood. Sin thus multiplies as rapidly as the Colorado beetle, 
and no matter what may be the first one, you may always 
call its name Gad, for you may surely say, " a troop cometh." 
Therefore, if we would successfully resist it, we must with- 
stand its beginnings. This is true of every sin, but it is 
more especially so of envy, which, as Tayler Lewis has re- 
rnarked in connection with this very history, has in it some- 
thing very peculiar, fully justifying the calling of it diabolical. 
For it is a purely soul sin, not traceable at all to the body, 
or in any way connected with it ; not having in it anything 
that has any resem.blance to good, but being only unmingled 
evil. It is the hatred of a man for the good that is in him, 
and so, to use Dr. Lewis's language, " It is the breath of the 
old serpent. It is pure devil, as it is also purely spiritual. 
It needs no body, no concupiscent organization, no appetites 



30 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

or fleshly motions, no nerves even, for the exercise of its dev- 
ilish energies. It is a soul-poison, yet acting fearfully upon 
the body itself, bringing more death into it than seemingly 
stronger and more tumultuous passions that have their nearer 
seat in the fleshly nature. It is '* rottenness in the bones." =^ 
Be on your guard, then, against yielding to any one sin, for it 
will speedily open the door of your heart to many others ; 
and be specially on your guard against the satanic mother- 
sin of envy. 

But mere negative measures here will not suffice. The 
hatred of a man for the good that is in him must be sup- 
planted by the love of Christ, and then what Chalmers calls 
"the expulsive power of a new affection " will come into op- 
eration. You expel darkness with light, and you shut evil 
out of the heart by the admission into it of Christ. 

But, in the third place, we may learn that in seeking to de- 
feat God's purposes we are all the while unconsciously help- 
ing on their fulfilment. These brothers of Joseph were bent 
on making the realization of his dreams impossible, and yet 
the thing which they did was one step towards the bringing 
about of the elevation of their brother. They were ignorant 
of that at the time, but they were made to see it after- 
wards ; and I specially call your attention to the fact that 
here they were working under no constraint. Nobody com- 
pelled them to give up their first idea of putting Joseph to 
death. The proposal to put him into a pit was purely spon- 
taneous with Reuben, and they were at liberty to act upon 
it or not as they chose. The same thing was true of the 
suggestion of Judah about selling him to the Ishmaelites ; 
and yet thus freely working, as they thought, for the falsifica- 
tion of his dreams, they were, after all, only helping to bring 
them to pass. Here is the whole of God's providence in 

* See note in Lange's *' Genesis," p. 589. 



Sold to the Ishmaelites. 31 

miniature — the Ishmaelites came past in the very nick of 
time, just at the moment when Joseph was in the pit; their 
presence suggested to Judah the idea of selling Joseph to 
them, and the rest of the brothers fell in with the proposal. 
Each party was seeking its own ends, and yet they were all 
contributing to bring about the purpose of God concerning 
Joseph. We cannot explain the "law" of it, but we clearly 
see the fact. Oh the marvellous wisdom of that providence 
of God which thus, without doing violence to the will of any 
human being, lays all their actions under tribute for the fur- 
therance of its designs ! And what is the use of a man's try- 
ing to thwart God's purposes when, whether he will or not, 
every thing he does only helps them forward? Surely it is 
better far to acquiesce in them, and find our happiness in 
the doing of his will ! 

But, in the fourth place, I note from this narrative that 
we do not get rid of a responsibility by putting it out of 
sight. Joseph's brethren sold him into Egypt, and thought 
they were finally done with him. We shall see by-and-by 
how grievously they misjudged. They had to confront him 
again, and they were held accountable for disposing of him 
as they did here. But how many people among ourselves 
act precisely as they did ? They have, let us say, a trouble- 
some son in the family, who is unsteady and unreliable in 
his habits, and they send him away — it makes no matter 
where, if only he is out of their sight and does not disturb 
their peace. Scarcely a week elapses that does not see some 
young man landed on these shores who has been sent away 
thus from his father's house on the other side of the Atlan- 
tic; and many of the families of well-to-do people in these 
Eastern cities have similar representatives in some of the 
new settlements in the West. They are sent away just to 
get rid of them. Ah! but that does not send away the re- 
sponsibility, and I fear that there is a sad reckoning at last 



32' Joseph the Prime-minister. 

for many who have thus cut their own children adrift, and 
taken measures simply that they might be sent out of their 
sight. "Where is thy son ?'^ may then be as hard for them 
to answer as Cain found that other question : " Where is 
thy brother ?" 

Finally, we may see here that there is a retributive ele- 
ment in our troubles. Jacob in his earlier days had deceived 
his father Isaac, and now his children conspire to impose 
upon him. He did not know at the time that they were 
lying to him, but when it all came out at the last, he would, 
I doubt not, recognize that God in his providence was pun- 
ishing him for deceiving Isaac, by letting his children de- 
ceive himself This was one of his "chickens" that came 
home " to roost," and very bitter was the experience. So 
let us remember that w^e are sowing seeds in our conduct 
now which shall spring up and bring forth fruit after their 
kind in our later lives. What says the Lord Jesus ? "With 
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." 
Therefore take care now how you treat other people, for you 
may be sure that before you get through some one else will 
treat you in the same way. God's providence has a retribu- 
tive element in it. That is what the Psalmist refers to when 
he says, "With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful ; 
with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright; with the 
pure thou wilt shew thyself pure ; and with the froward thou 
wilt shew thyself froward." Take care, therefore, how you 
treat others, and to this end get from Jesus Christ the spirit 
to act upon the golden rule, "All things whatsoever ye would 
that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them ; for 
this is the Law and the Prophets." 



III. 

SOLD INTO SLAVERY. 
Gen. xxxix., 1-7. 

THE Ishmaelites carried Joseph with them into Egypt, 
and sold him there into slavery* But as so much de- 
pends, both for the understanding of the narrative and for 
the vindication of its credibility, on a knowledge of the char- 
acteristics, history, and antiquities of that remarkable coun- 
try, it may be well, before we follow farther the career of the 
young captive, that we should have some definite ideas on 
these important particulars. The name Egypt, in its strict- 
est significance, belongs to the valley of the Nile from the 
first cataract to the Mediterranean — that is to say, be- 
tween 240 (y and 310 36' of north latitude. The average 
breadth of the valley up to the bifurcation of the river 
at the apex of the delta is about six miles, although at cer- 
tain places it widens to about sixteen. It was divided into 
three portions— Upper, Middle, and Lower, the Upper lying 
farthest to the south, the Lower to the north, and the Middle 
between. But the dual form of the Hebrew word which sig- 
nifies Egypt seems to indicate that originally there were only 
two divisions, the Upper and the Lower. Bounded on the 
north by the sea, and on all other sides by immense des- 
erts, the land is an oasis which depends for its fertility en- 
tirely on the annual overflow of the river ; for except in the 
region which borders on the Mediterranean, there is no rain- 
fall worth mentioning, and in the southern district not a 

2^ 



34 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

cloud is seen in the sky all the year round. In these cir- 
cumstances the extent and utilization of the yearly flood of 
the Nile involve in them the prosperity — one might almost 
say the very life — of the people ; and long before the origin 
of the wonderful phenomenon was known, they had learned 
to turn it to the greatest advantage. For many centuries — 
indeed one may say for more than three millenniums — a 
mystery enshrouded this periodical inundation, and the 
source of the Nile was regarded as one of those secrets 
which Nature refused to reveal. Somewhere about a hundred 
and twenty years ago the intrepid traveller Bruce thought 
that he had succeeded in discovering it, but though the ac- 
count of his adventures was singularly interesting, and later 
investigators have confirmed even the most startling of his 
statements, it was ultimately found that he had mistaken one 
of the tributaries of the river for its main stream, and only 
very recently have the real facts in regard to the matter 
been brought to light by the labors of Burton, Speke, Grant, 
and Livingstone, supplemented by those of Stanley and 
Baker. We now know that it is formed by the junction, at 
Khartoum, in latitude 15° 35' north, of the White Nile with 
the Blue Nile. The White Nile comes from the Victoria 
Nyanza, a large lake situated under the equator. The Blue 
Nile rises in the alpine regions of Abyssinia. After the 
junctioo of those two main branches the river receives, in 
latitude 17^ 45' north, the Atbara or Black Nile, and for the 
remainder of its course it runs without the addition of an- 
other tributary. From the equatorial source of the Nile to 
its mouth at the Mediterranean the length of its course is, 
according to Baker, about three thousand four hundred 
miles, and he says that "it may be divided into two portions 
by almost halving the thirty-two degrees of latitude in a 
direct line. Fifteen will include the rainy zone north of the 
equator, and the remaining seventeen to Alexandria com- 



Sold into Slavery. 35 

prise the vast deserts which are devoid of water." ^ Now the 
explanation of the inundation is as follows : The White Nile, 
fed by the immense equatorial lakes, which are themselves 
supported by a rainfall lasting for more than nine months 
out of the twelve, and which constitute great natural reser- 
voirs, sends down a constant, vast, and only slightly varying 
stream of water to the sea. Unlike it, however, the Blue and 
the Black tributaries are largely intermittent, and in the dry 
season would fail, without the White River, to reach the Med- 
iterranean at all. On the other hand, without these two 
affluents the Nile would have no flood, and, even if it had, 
would leave little or no alluvial deposit. But the heavy 
summer rains in Abyssinia, which fall between May and 
September, wash down the rich lands of that country by the 
Blue Nile and the Atbara, and these, added to the ordinary 
current of the White Nile, increase its volume so as to cause 
the periodical overflow, and at the same time to charge its 
waters with red argillaceous mud to such an extent that 
when spread over a wide surface, and allowed sufficient 
slackness of current for the purpose, they precipitate over 
the land that rich alluvial dressing which enables it to pro- 
duce a constant series of the most abundant harvests. Thus, 
roughly speaking, the White Nile supplies the unfailing vol- 
ume of water, and the Abyssinian tributaries give the annual 
inundation. The river begins to rise at Cairo about the end 
of June, and goes on increasing until the end of September, 
then, after remaining at the same level for a few days, it 
commences to fall, and continues to do so until about the 
middle of the following May. If the rise be less than twen- 
ty-four feet there will be a scanty harvest, and if less than 
twenty there will be a famine ; but if it exceed thirty, the 
villages will be flooded, and great damage will be the result. 

* See article on the Soudan in The Independent^ January 17, 1884. 



36 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Thus in a very literal sense Egypt is as it was anciently said 
to be, " the gift of the Nile ;" for everything in the land 
depends, directly or indirectly, on the river, and we cannot 
wonder that it became an object of reverence^ if not of wor- 
ship, among the people. 

The inhabitants of this remarkable country very early at- 
tained to a high degree of civilization. They were the old- 
est of the nations, and the first in most of the liberal arts. 
Jealous as the modern Chinese and Coreans of all foreign- 
ers, they had little or nothing of the stationariness by which 
these hermit peoples have been distinguished, but had made 
great advancement in many directions. At the time of 
Abraham's sojourn among them they had a settled govern- 
ment and established laws. They had built cities and prac- 
tised agriculture, and when the wealth of neighboring com- 
munities consisted in flocks and herds, they had found out 
the value of real estate, and reverenced a landmark as a 
god. Even at that early date the great Pyramid was in ex- 
istence to attest their proficiency in mechanics; and the 
monuments which have been disentombed in recent years, 
and whose inscriptions have been deciphered by modern 
scholars, prove that they had invented hieroglyphic writing, 
and were gradually advancing towards an alphabet. From 
the same source we learn many particulars of their manners 
and customs in common life, and it is interesting to note, as 
we shall have to do in the further consideration of the life 
of Joseph, the exact harmony of the descriptions given in 
the narrative with the delineations found upon the monu- 
ments. 

Their early history is quite uncertain, and it would serve 
no good purpose to enter here into a detailed account of the 
thirty or thirty-one dynasties of kings enumerated by Mane- 
tho, or to explain the various theories which have been ad- 
vanced regarding them by such men as Bunsen, Lane, Lep- 



Sold into Slavery. 37 

sius, and others. It may be enough to say that all agree in 
considering that one great landmark in Egyptian history is 
the invasion and dominion of the Hyksos or Shepherd kings, 
and that another is the overthrow and expulsion of these 
usurpers. The most eminent authorities designate the fif- 
teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties as those of the 
Shepherds. With the eighteenth a new epoch was inaugu- 
rated; and as the Pharaoh of the time of the Exodus is now 
by most identified with Menepthath, son of Rameses IL, 
of the nineteenth dynasty, the Pharaoh of Joseph is sup- 
posed to be one of the kings of the seventeenth dynasty, 
whose date is in the later part of the Shepherd dominion, 
and somewhat before B.C. 1700. Joseph would thus be 
raised to his position as governor of Egypt by a king who, 
though himself a foreigner, and able to appreciate foreign 
merit, was one of those who had, as the result of the long 
sojourn of his people in the land, adopted Egyptian titles 
and usages, and the king, " who knew not Joseph," may have 
belonged to the new dynasty by whom the Shepherds were 
expelled. This is the view — in the main, at least — adopted 
by Poole, who thus writes : *' The story of Joseph is illus- 
trated step by step from the Egyptian texts. The * Tale of 
the Two Brothers,' the earliest known of Egyptian fictions, 
was no sooner read than it was seen to relate, in its turning- 
point, an incident identical with the trial of Joseph. Pha- 
raoh's dream of the kine describes the years of plenty and 
famine under the usual type of the inundation, as Dr. Birch 
has shown. The installation of Joseph has its parallel in 
the case of an Egyptian governor of the age of the eigh- 
teenth dynasty, who received exactly the same ofiice, ^ Lord 
of all Egypt,'* in the Egyptian record a Mord of the whole 
land,' the word lord being ^adon ' in both cases. f The term 

* Gen. xlv.,9. t Brugsch, " History,"!, 269, 270. 



38 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

in Hebrew means ' ruler / in Egyptian its sense is more spe- 
cial, and the whole title of Joseph may best be rendered 
' regent."* Two circumstances of the narrative bring us very 
near Egyptian official usages. ' By the life of Pharaoh ' is 
used as a strong asseveration by Joseph,t and when he [has] 
had sworn to his father, after the Hebrew manner, that he 
will not bury him in Egypt, then ' Israel bowed himself upon 
the head of his staff.' J Both the expression ^by the life of 
Pharaoh ' and the custom of bowing upon the staff of an 
officer are traced by M. Chabas in his interesting essays on 
Egyptian judicial proceedings, where he cites the following 
passage describing the taking an oath by a witness in a trial 
at Thebes : 'He made a life of the royal lord, striking his 
nose and his ears, and placing himself on the head of the 
staff,'§ the ordinary oath when the witness bowed himself 
on the magistrate's staff of office. He well remarks that 
this explains the passage in Genesis quoted as above, as a 
recognition by Jacob of his son's authority.|| This illustra- 
tion shows the Septuagint is right in reading hamatteh staff, 
in agreement with Hebrews xi., 71, where the Masoretes read 
hamittah bed, and a question of controversy disappears." 
Then, after a most interesting series of paragraphs on the 
oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, and their exodus out 
of it, he proceeds in this wise : " The date of the Hebrew 
documents in general has been here assumed to be that as- 
signed to them by the older scholars. This position is justi- 
fied by the Egyptian evidence. German and Dutch critics 
have labored with extraordinary acuteness and skill tip07i the 
Mosaic documents alone^^ with such illustrations as they could 
obtain from collateral records, using, be it remembered, such 



* " Brugsch," /. c, t Gen. xlii., 15, 16. % Gen. xlvii., 29-31. 

§ " Melange's Egyptologiques," iii., I. 80. 

11 Ibid.^ 91, 92. IT The italics are ours. 



Sold INTO Slavery. 39 

records as all the older and too many of the later classical 
scholars out of Germany and France have used coins and 
inscriptions, not as independent sources but as mere illustra- 
tions. The work has been that of great literary critics, not 
of archaeologists. The result has been to reduce the date of 
the documents, except a few fragments, by many centuries. 
[But] the Egyptian documents emphatically call for a recon- 
sideration of the whole question of the date of the Penta- 
teuch,^ It is now certain that the narrative of the history 
of Joseph and the sojourn and exodus of the Israelites — that 
is to say, the portion from Genesis xxxix. to Exodus xv. — so 
far as it relates to Egypt, is substantially not much later than 
B.C. 1300 ; in other words, was written while the memory of 
the events was fresh. The minute accuracy of the text is 
inconsistent with any later date. It is not merely that it 
shews knowledge of Egypt, but knowledge of Egypt under 
the Ramessides and yet earlier. The condition of the coun- 
try, the chief cities of the frontier, the composition of the 
army, are true of the age of the Ramessides, and not true 
of the age of the Pharaohs, contemporary with Solomon and 
his successors. If the Hebrew documents are of the close 
of the period of the kings of Judah, how is it that they 
are true of the earlier condition, not of that which was 
contemporary with those kings ? Why is the Egypt of the 
law markedly different from the Egypt of the prophets, each 
condition being described consistently with its Egyptian rec- 
ords, themselves contemporary with the events ? Why is 
Egypt described in the Law as one kingdom, and no hint 
given of the break-up of the Empire into the small princi- 
palities mentioned by Isaiah (xix., 2) ? Why do the proper 
names belong to the Ramesside and earlier age, without a 



* That is, a reconsideration of the date as supposed to be settled by 
the " Higher criticism" alone. 



40 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

single instance of those Semitic names which came into 
fashion with the Bubastic line in Solomon's time ? AVhy 
do Zoan-Rameses and Zoar take the places of Migdol 
and Tahpanhes ? Why are the foreign mercenaries, .such 
as the Lubrin, spoken of in the constitution of Egyp- 
tian armies in the time of the kingdom of Judah, wholly 
unmentioned ? The relations of Egypt with foreign coun- 
tries are not less characteristic. The kingdom of Ethi- 
opia, which overshadowed Egypt from before Hezekiah's 
time and throughout his reign, is unmentioned in the 
earlier documents. The earlier Assyrian Empire, which 
rose for a time on the fall of the Egyptian, nowhere ap- 
pears. 

" These agreements have not failed to strike foreign Egyp- 
tologists who have no theological bias. These independent 
scholars, w^ithout actually formulating any view of the date 
of the greater part of the Pentateuch, appear uniformly to 
treat its text as an authority to be cited side by side with 
the Egyptian monuments. So Lepsius, in his researches on 
the date of the Exodus, and Brugsch, in his discussion of the 
route, and Chabas, in his paper on Rameses and Pithan. 
Of course it would be unfair to implicate any one of these 
scholars in the inferences expressed above ; but, at the same 
time, it is impossible that they can, for instance, hold Kuen- 
en's theories of the date of the Pentateuch, so far as the part 
relating to Egypt is concerned. They have taken the two 
sets of documents — Hebrew and Egyptian — side by side, and 
in the working of elaborate problems found everything con- 
sistent with accuracy on both sides ; and of course accuracy 
would not be maintained in a tradition handed down through 
several centuries. If the large portion of the Pentateuch 
relating to the Egyptian period of Hebrew history, including 
as it does Elohistic as well as Jehovistic sections, is of the 
remote antiquity here claimed for it, no one can doubt that 



Sold INTO Slavery. 41 

the first four books of Moses are substantially of the same 
age."* 

I make no apology for the length of this quotation ; its 
own excellence is my best defence. But I wish you to bear 
in mind in connection with it the following particulars : In 
the first place, it is the deliberate judgment, given not much 
more than six years ago in the pages of the Contemporary Re- 
view, of one who is regarded as a competent authority on the 
matters to which he refers. He was selected to write the ar- 
ticle on Egypt in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible." He is 
joint author with a coadjutor of his own name of the article on 
Egypt in the new edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica ;" 
so that what he says on Egyptology must command respect- 
ful attention. In the second place, he is of necessity also a 
good scholar in Hebrew and the cognate languages, able to 
appreciate and to weigh in the balance of an independent 
and well-informed judgment the statements of the Higher 
Critics in their owni department. In the third place, he has 
no prejudice against the Higher Critics as such. So far 
from that being the case, he speaks of them in terms of the 
greatest respect, and rightly warns those who accept his con- 
clusions from rushing to the extreme of denying altogether 
the value of criticism ; while at the same time he clearly 
sees that, as presently cultivated, its excellences in analysis 
are marred by its defects in constructive skill. He thus 
occupies impartial ground, being neither trammelled by au- 
thority nor enslaved by specialism. Then, in the fourth 
place, his judgment is given without any hesitation in behalf 
of the received date of the first four books of the Penta- 
teuch and their historical credibility. 

It has come to be regarded, I know not why, that scholar- 

* Reginald Stuart Poole, art. Modern Egypt, in Conte7nporary Re- 
view, March, 1879, PP- 752, 753, 757-59- 



42 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ship is altogether on the side of those who would have us to 
look upon the earliest books of Scripture as so many collec- 
tions of myths, or sagas, or the like ; and every one who 
raises his voice against such opinions is held, ipso facto^ to be 
an ignoramus, altogether incompetent to pronounce an opin- 
ion on the subject. Moreover, they who advocate the theo- 
ries of Kuenen, and others of the same school, are heralded 
as reformers, new Martin Luthers, who have come to usher 
in a grander liberty than the great German dreamed of; and 
their words are caught by the swift fingers of the reporters 
for the press, and sent all over the land, while utterances 
like those which I have just quoted are allowed to fall to the 
ground unheeded ; though perhaps it may be found that in 
the end liberty will be better served by adhering to the old 
than by following the new. But new or old is not the ques- 
tion ; liberty or not is not the question. The question is, 
True or noil and on that issue I would give a thousand times 
more weight to the judgment of, a competent and candid 
expert like Reginald Stuart Poole, than to that of a mere 
retailer of the destructive conclusions of the most recent 
rationalistic critics. 

And now, having once for all disposed of this subject, let 
us look very briefly at Joseph's first position in Egypt. It 
was that of a slave exposed for sale in the open market. God 
be thanked, we can now repeat these words in this land with- 
out the humiliating consciousness that a similar sight might 
still be seen within our own borders ! It was a pitiful plight 
to be in — to have to face the peering looks of possible pur- 
chasers, as they scanned the special " points " that were note- 
worthy in him ; to hear the tones of criticisms that were other- 
wise unintelligible ; and to be led away at length by one who 
called him his property. Oh, it is too horrible to think of! 
One's whole manhood rises up in rebellion against the very 
idea ; and we would have excused Joseph if he had mani- 



Sold into Slavery. 43 

fested some resistance on the occasion. For God has given 
me to myself, and no mortal has a right to me as a chattel. 
If Tell was a hero because he fought against the tyranny of 
Austria ; and Bruce because he struggled against the oppres- 
sion of England ; and Washington because he rebelled against 
the injustice of Great Britain — -is not the slave also a hero 
who struggles for his personal liberty? What right has a 
nation to its autonomy more than a man has to his freedom ? 
And if we honor the soldier who helps an oppressed people 
to independence, shall we not honor, also, him who helps a 
slave to freedom ? These were the sentiments that animated 
John Brown in his famous expedition ; and though it was at 
first a failure, it proved in the end to have been a splendid 
success. 

But there was no one near poor Joseph to help him into 
liberty, and so he was bought and led away by Potiphar, 
an officer of Pharaoh and "captain of the guard.'' He is 
called an Egyptian, probably to mark that while his master 
was one of the Shepherd kings, he himself belonged to a 
native family ; and this view is supported by the fact that 
his name contains that of an Egyptian divinity. He is styled 
"the captain of the guard," or, as the original may be more 
literally rendered, "chief of the executioners." It is not 
easy to say what office that title specially designated. Some 
would make it " chief-marshal,'' others, "provost-marshal," 
and others "master of the horse." Dr. Kitto considers it 
to be "chief of the royal police." He writes as follows: 
"Potiphar was undoubtedly the chief of the executioners; 
but this is a high office in the East as a court office, for such 
executioners have nothing to do with the execution of the 
awards of the law, in its ordinary course, but only with those 
of the king. It is thus an office of great responsibility ; and 
to insure its proper, and, if need be, prompt execution, it is 
intrusted to an officer of the court, who has necessarily un- 



44 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

der his command a body of men whose duty it is to preserve 
the order and peace of the palace and its precincts, to attend 
and guard the royal person on public occasions, and under 
the direction of their chief to inflict such punishment as the 
king awards upon those who incur his displeasure. He there- 
fore, in this sense, may be called ^captain of the guard' or 
'chief- marshal' Further, it appears that this officer had, 
adjoining to or connected with his house, a round building 
in which the king's prisoners — those who had incurred the 
royal suspicion or disjoleasure — were detained in custody till 
their doom should be determined. A functionary who com- 
bined these various duties in his person cannot perhaps be 
better described than by the title, 'chief of the royal police.' ""* 
When he saw his destination, Joseph, rightly believing that 
he was still the ward of Jehovah, determined to accept the 
situation, and adjust himself to his environment. Therefore 
he did willingly, and with his best skill, everything that was 
required at his hands ; so that he soon secured the confi- 
dence of his master, who found it to be to his interest to in- 
trust everything in his establishment to Joseph's care. "He 
left all that he had in Joseph's hand; and he knew not aught 
he had, save the bread which he did eat." This is quite in 
harmony with what we know otherwise of the custom of the 
time ; for the Egyptian monuments frequently represent 
scribes or stewards as superintending the property of rich 
men, and carefully registering all the operations of the house- 
hold, the garden, the field, etc. Joseph did all this so well that 
everything went on with harmony and turned out profitably, 
and Potiphar congratulated himself that he had got a treas- 
ure in his slave. Joseph, too, might be rejoicing within 
himself that the lines had fallen unto him in such pleasant 

* Kitto's " Bible History of the Holy Land," quoted in Fairbairn's 
*' Imperial Bible Dictionary," art. Potiphar. 



Sold into Slavery. 45 

places, and contrasting his lot with that of many a poor 
slave in the land, when, through the very loyalty of his heart 
to his master, and the very strictness of his adherence to 
the course of purity and rectitude, he found himself at length 
consigned as a criminal to prison. How all that came 
about, and what ultimately resulted from it, will appear as 
we proceed. Meanwhile we must here break off, and linger 
only long enough to take with us two or three practical les- 
sons, which may help us under and through the captivities 
of our lives. 

We have all our captivities at some time or other in our 
experience. The essence of Joseph's trial here was that he 
was taken whither he had no wish to go, and was prevent- 
ed from going back again to the home in which his father 
was sitting mourning for his loss. But is not interference 
with our comfort or our liberty still the bitter element in all 
our afflictions } Take bodily illness, for example, and when 
you get at the root of the discomfort of it, you find it in the 
union of these two things: you are where you do not want 
to be — where you would never have thought of putting your- 
self — and you are held there, whether you will or not, by a 
Power that is stronger than your own. No external force 
constrains you, no fetters are on your limbs, yet you are held 
where you are against your own liking, and you do not relish 
the situation — you are a captive. But the same thing comes 
out in almost every sort of trial. You are, let me sup- 
pose, in business perplexity. But that is not of your own 
choosing; if you could have m.anaged it, you would have 
been in quite different circumstances. Yet, in spite of you, 
things have gone against you. Men whom you had implicit- 
ly trusted, and whom you would have had no more thought 
of doubting than you would think now of doubting your 
mother's love, have proved deceitful; or the course of trade 
has gone against you, and you are brought to a stand. You 



46 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

have been carried away perhaps by brothers, perhaps by 
Ishmaelites — for the race is not yet extinct — from the Ca- 
naan of comfort to the Egypt of captivity, and you are now 
in helpless perplexity. It may be standing, not like Joseph, 
in the slave-pen, but in the market-place of labor, and con- 
demned to do nothing, because "no man hath hired ^' you. 
Ah ! there are many, too many always, in a large city like 
this who are in just such circumstances. What then ? Let 
them learn from Joseph here that the first thing to do in a 
captivity is to acquiesce in it as the will of God concerning 
them. The young Israelite did not lose time or strength by 
struggling unwisely against a higher might than his own ; 
he bowed to the inevitable, and adjusted himself to it, be- 
cause he had learned, from his talks with his good old grand- 
father Isaac and his father Jacob, that God was in it, and 
had a w^atchful eye over his history. So in a trial we have, 
first of all, to accept it as the will of God in Christ Jesus con- 
cerning us, and to say regarding it, " This also cometh from 
the Lord, who is wonderful in council and excellent in work- 
ing.^' Fretting over that from which we have been removed, 
or which has been taken away from us, will not make things 
better, but it will prevent us from improving those which re- 
main. The bond is only tightened by our stretching it to 
the uttermost. The impatient horse which will not quietly 
endure his halter only strangles himself in his stall. The 
high-mettled animal that is restive in the yoke only galls his 
shoulders ; and every one will understand the difference be- 
tween the restless starling of which Sterne has written, break- 
ing its wings against the bars of its cage, and crying, " I can't 
get out ! I can't get out !" and the docile canary that sits upon 
its perch and sings as if it w^ould outrival the lark at heav- 
en's own gate, so moving its mistress to open the door of its 
prison - house and give it the full range of the room. He 
who is constantly looking back and bewailing what he has 



Sold into Slavery. 47 

lost, does only thereby unfit himself for improving in any way 
the discipline to which God has subjected him ; whereas the 
man who brings his mind down to his lower lot, and de- 
liberately examines how he can serve God best in that, is 
already on his way to better things. Thus, paradoxical as it 
may seem, acquiescence in an affliction is the first step in 
the way out of it. 

But then, in the second place, we must learn from Joseph 
to make the best of our remaining opportunities in our cap- 
tivity. If he was to be a slave, Joseph was determined he 
would be the best of slaves, and what he was required to do 
he would do with his might and with his heart. This is a 
most important consideration, and it may, perhaps, help to 
explain why similar trials have had such different results in 
different persons. One has been bemoaning that it is not 
with him as it used to be, while the other has discovered 
that some talents have been still left him, and he has set to 
work with these. One has been saying, "If I had only the 
resources which I once possessed I could do something; but 
now they have gone, I am helpless." But the other has 
been soliloquizing thus : " If I can do nothing else I can at 
least do this, little as it is ; and if I put it into the hand of 
Christ, he can make it great;'' and so we account for the 
unhappiness and uselessness of the one, and for the happi- 
ness and usefulness of the other. Nor will it do to say that 
this difference is a mere thing of temperament. It is a thing 
of character. The one acts in faith, recognizing God's hand 
in his affliction, the other acts in unbelief, seeing nothing but 
his own calamity, and that only increases his affliction. So 
we come to this : keep fast hold of God's hand in your cap- 
tivity, and do your best in that which is open to you. That 
will ultimately bring you out of it; but if you lose that you 
will lose everything. 



IV. 

TEMPTED BUT TRIUMPHANT 
Gen. xxxix., 7-23. 

WE have no absolutely certain data from which to make 
a calculation \ but as Joseph is said to have been 
thirty years of age when he first stood before Pharaoh )^ as 
two years elapsed after his interpretation of the dreams of 
the chief butler and the chief baker, before he was sent for 
to explain those of the king jf and as some little time must 
be allowed, say at least one year, for his rise from a prisoner 
to the office of chief warden in the prison, this would make 
him twenty- seven at the beginning of his imprisonment. 
Now he was seventeen when he was first sold into the hands 
of the Ishmaelites, J and so we get the result, conjectural in- 
deed, but yet probable, that he served in the house of Poti- 
phar for ten years. During all that time he had given the 
highest satisfaction to his master, and, at length, had so 
grown into his confidence that, except in the preparation of 
his food — a matter which no Egyptian would intrust to a for- 
eigner — Potiphar had left the management of his affairs en- 
tirely in his hands. But now there came a terrible trial, be- 
fore v*'hich multitudes v.'ould have fallen, but out of which he 
came blighted, indeed, for a season in reputation, but strength- 
ened and ennobled in character, and so the better fitted for 
the performance of the work which he had still to do. The 
particulars of that trial are set forth with sufficient distinct- 

* Gen. xli., 46. t Gen. xli., i. % Gen. xxxvii., 2. 



Tempted but Triumphant. 49 

ness in the narrative, and need not be dwelt on here. Suf- 
fice it to say that the wife of his master sought to make him 
partner with herself in a guilty intrigue, which had in it some 
strong elements of allurement to a young man of his age and 
in his circumstances. I say nothing now of the shameless 
immorality of his temptress, except to remark that it is quite 
in keeping with some representations of Egyptian women 
which have been found upon the recently discovered frescoes. 
For though now, in all Eastern lands, women are secluded 
and kept in harems by themselves, the Egyptian females of 
these early times were not only under no particular restraint, 
but were sometimes addicted to excesses. Thus, Wilkinson 
tells us that they were not restricted in the use of wine and 
in the enjoyment of other luxuries, and that " the painters, in 
illustrating this fact, have sometimes sacrificed their gallant- 
ry to a love of caricature. Some call the servants to support 
them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves 
from falling on those behind them ; a basin is brought too 
late by a reluctant servant; and the faded flower which is 
ready to drop from their heated hands is intended to be 
characteristic of their own sensations.""^ A description like 
that may enable us, perhaps, the better to understand the 
statements made in the sacred history. 

But leaving such gross and repulsive things, let us look at 
the magnitude of this temptation. It came on Joseph when 
he was dwelling among a nation of idolaters, away from the 
restraints of home and the influence of his father and grand- 
father, by which he had been accustomed to be regulated. 
If, therefore, his piety had been a mere conventional thing, 
he would certainly have yielded, as many others in like cir- 
cumstances have done. Which of us has not known cases 

* " The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," by Sir J. G. 
Wilkinson, vol. i., p. 393. American Edition, 1883. 

3 



50 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

of youths who at home were reputable and well behaved, 
but who, when they have gone to another city or another 
land, where they were entirely unknown to those by whom 
they w^ere surrounded, have run riot in iniquity, and excused 
themselves by quoting the debasing proverb that ** when we 
are in Rome we must do as they do at Rome ?" But Joseph 
was not a youth of that sort. His piety was not a matter of 
longitude and latitude. He believed in God, and sought to 
serve him in all places and in all cases ; and he did in Egypt 
precisely as he would have done, in like circumstances, in 
Canaan. 

Again, this temptation which came upon him thus, when 
he was away from all external support, took him in two 
points of his nature at one and the same time. It appealed 
to appetite ; and if Paul thought it needful to say to Timothy, 
who was a young man of rather ascetic habits, devoted to 
the ministry of the gospel, and surrounded by all wholesome 
influences, "flee also youthful lusts," we may well believe 
that Joseph was not insensible to its force in that particular. 
But that was not its most seductive aspect, as I believe, to 
him. For the entering into this intrigue meant also for him 
the putting of Potiphar ultimately out of the way, and his 
own elevation, in an easy and speedy fashion, to his master's 
place. That must be clear to all acquainted with Eastern 
life. Now see what all that implied. Joseph had not for- 
gotten his early dreams. There still hovered before him a 
vision of the time when his brothers should make obeisance 
to him, and he should rise to some post of dignity and influ- 
ence on the earth — the hope of attaining that ujDheld him all 
those years — and lo ! here is a short and alluring pathway to 
what seemed to promise that very thing. Might he not take 
it, therefore, without reluctance or compunction ? Thus there 
came upon him at once two of the very allurements which 
Satan put, one after the other, before the Lord Jesus in the 



Tempted but Triumphant. 51 

wilderness. You remember that to the hungry Son of Man 
the tempter said, " If thou be the son of God, command that 
these stones be made bread," thereby opening the door for 
the satisfaction of appetite in a forbidden way ; and again, 
that to him who came into the world to be a king whose do- 
minion should be universal, he said on the mountain-top, 
after he had shown him all the kingdoms of the world and 
the glory of them, " All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall 
down and worship me," thus offering him the crown without 
the cross, and the long and arduous journey that led up 
thereto. Now, precisely these were the temptations that 
Joseph here had to face. They took the Lord, as I have 
said, one after the other; but they came upon him both at 
once, and he had to meet them without having the advan- 
tage of the armory of the written word wherein Jesus found 
the weapons with which he repulsed his adversary. But just 
as little would he yield as did the Lord. It was not that 
there was in him no fleshly appetite, but that he had learned 
to keep that in its place, and to make it subservient to the 
service of his God. It was not that he had no ambition, but 
that he was content to wait for its gratification until that 
could be secured in a manner worthy of his God's approval. 
And so he put them both from him with no half-hearted op- 
position, but in a decided and determined manner. There 
was no "yes" in the "no" which he uttered, and when he 
was assailed with repeated importunity, he only repeated 
more emphatically his refusal. 

Nor can we help remarking on the grounds whereon he 
based his conduct, for they show as really his fidelity to man 
as his loyalty to God. He could not be guilty of treachery 
against Potiphar, or of sin against God. His own pleasure 
or elevation would be too dearly purchased by ingratitude to 
one who had placed such unlimited confidence in him, and no 
gratification could to him be lasting which dishonored God. 



52 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

But after he had taken that stand, and by the very taking 
of it, he made an implacable enemy of his mistress. One 
of our greatest poets has spoken of "lust hard by hate," and 
another has affirmed that 

*' Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," 

so that we do not wonder at the course which she followed. 
She was determined to ruin him, one way or another, and 
therefore when, to get rid of her solicitations, he fled from 
her, leaving his garment in her hand, she immediately saw 
her opportunity for revenge, and went to her husband with 
the cunningly woven story which is thus given in the record : 
" The Hebrew servant which thou hast brought unto us, 
came in unto me to mock me ; and it came to pass, as I lifted 
up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me and 
fled out." The result was that Potiphar, without giving Jo- 
seph an opportunity to vindicate himself, put him at once 
into the king's prison ; or, as the words literally rendered 
are, ^' the house of roundness,'' "the round house where the 
king's prisoners were bound." This is described by Kitto as 
"an edifice or portion of the official mansion, mostly subter- 
ranean, of which the roof or vault, rising immediately from 
the surface of the ground, was round or shaped like an in- 
verted bowl. That it was of this nature may be inferred from 
its being called in chapter xli., 15, the ' dungeon.' " He adds 
that "such dungeons are still, under similar circumstances, 
used in the East, and they have usually an aperture at the 
top by which some light and air are admitted, and through 
v;hich the prisoners are let down. They are always upon 
the premises of the chief of the guard or of the magistrate."* 
Into such a place, then, Joseph was thrust ; and it is probable 
that at first he was treated with much harshness, for we are 

* ''Daily Bible Illustrations," vol. i., p. 382. 



Tempted but Triumphant. 53 

told in the hundred and fifth Psalm^ that "they hurt his feet 
with fetters, and laid him in irons." It was very sad, but it 
might have been worse ; and it would have been worse if he 
had been there and guilty ; but as he was there and guiltless, 
he could still look up to God, and take a silent appeal to 
him. For a time, indeed, he may have been utterly cast 
down ; but at length he found his old consolation in his re- 
ligious faith, and by his demeanor he so won upon his jailer 
that the rigor of his confinement was relaxed, and he became 
the trusted servant of the keeper of the prison, who commit- 
ted to him the care of all who had been intrusted to his 
custody. 

But here we must leave him for a while, and turn aside 
from the course of the history to gather up some wholesome 
lessons from the portion of it which has at this time been 
under our review. 

We may learn, then, in the first place, that when we have 
unusual blessing we may look for severe temptation. Jo- 
seph had been preferred to great honor. His master in- 
trusted everything to his care, and he had reached a position 
of ease and comfort and respectability. There was much in 
all this prosperity to lull him into sleep, as if now he had 
passed through the dangerous stage in his career ; yet out of 
that very prosperity came this new peril, and it was the great- 
est which he had yet encountered. For though his brothers 
had sold him into slavery, they could not and did not dis- 
pose of his soul; but this was a temptation to sell his soul 
into the slavery of sin. It is sometimes suggested, by the 
way in which men speak of affliction and adversity, that these 
are the only experiences which are fraught with peril to 
the character. But I believe that there is more real risk 
in prosperity than in either of the others, and I know that in 

* Verse 1 8. 



54 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

the Scriptures this is very strikingly illustrated by many sad 
examples. David stood well all the tests of privation and 
persecution when he was on the way jto the throne, but after 
he had reached it, and had surmounted all his difficulties, he 
fell into heinous sin. And if we care to look around us, we 
shall discover that the critical times in the history of many 
men have not been while they were struggling up the hill in 
self-help, but after they had reached the summit. It takes a 
.steady hand to carry a full cup; it- requires a good head to 
stand upon a lofty height ; and those who have got as high 
as they can reach — who are, as we say, at the top of the tree 
— had need be on their guard lest some Delilah should come 
to worm out of them the secret of their strength, and deliver 
them over as captives to the prince of darkness. The more 
prosperous you are, therefore, the nearer ;^'ou are to the top 
in your profession or business, seek to be the more watchful, 
for in the spiritual warfare, as in that of earth, "eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of safety." 

But we may learn from this history, in the second place, 
that when temptation takes us we must resist it with a strong 
and decided No, and carefully take ourselves out of its range. 
Joseph put the matter on the highest ground when he said, 
"How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" 
and he held no parley with his temptress, but steadily re- 
fused her importunity, and finally ran away from her pres- 
ence. This course, though it roused her indignation, yet 
kept himself from defilement, and stands in striking contrast 
to that followed, for example, by Samson. If that singularly 
weak man, for all so strong as he was, had never entered 
into conversation with Delilah about his strength, he had 
never lost it and fallen a victim to the Philistines. If he 
had not allowed her to weave the seven locks of his hair 
into a web, he had not ultimately told her wherein his strength 
did really lie. But by little and little, through his parley 



Tempted but Triumphant. 55 

with her, he gave himself into her power. So, again, when 
Balaam said " no " to Balak, he did so in such a half-hearted 
way as to reveal that he would much rather have said " yes," 
and therefore, when the application was renewed, he went on 
in that way which ended in destruction. Now, there must 
be no such half-heartedness with us. Let us say "no" to 
sin as if we meant it — not rudely, indeed, for there is no 
need for rudeness, but distinctly and decidedly, like those 
whose minds have been made up to the course to which 
they mean to adhere. And if the application be repeated, 
let us repeat our refusal, if possible, more emphatically than 
ever. When Nehemiah was assailed by his adversaries, who 
sought to beguile him into the plain of Ono, that they might 
there assassinate him, he replied, " I am doing a great work, 
and I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while 
I leave it and come down to you ?" And when they sent to 
him four times after this sort, he answered them as many 
times after the same manner. So let it be with us. Let our 
" nay " here be unmistakable, without any qualification or 
reservation or apology, and then, if after all it is not thor- 
oughly understood, let us run away, as Joseph did, even 
though we should leave our raiment behind us, believing, as 
Matthew Henry quaintly says, that " it is better to lose a 
good coat than a good conscience." Ah ! how many there 
are who go out to court a temptation. Heedless of the com- 
mand of Christ, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into tempta- 
tion," they deliberately put themselves in its way, and of 
course they fall before it. That result is just about as cer- 
tain as it is that there will be an explosion if, with an open 
barrel of gunpowder in your arms, you go into a smithy 
where the sparks are flying all around. " Can a man take 
fire into his bosom and his clothes not be burned ^ Can one 
go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned ?" No more 
can you put yourself into the way of temptation without in- 



56 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

juring your souls. It would be perilous to do so, even if you 
were innocent and holy ; how much more so, considering the 
inherent depravity by which we are all characterized ! It is 
dangerous to drive restive horses near the edge of a preci- 
pice ; it is dangerous to bring gunpowder near the fire ; it is 
dangerous to come near an adder's fangs ; and it is equally 
so with these fallen natures of ours to approach temptation. 
Therefore "avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass 
away." 

But the merely negative attitude will, after all, be weak, 
and so I stay here a moment longer to add that the best 
means of saying ''no" to sin is to say "yes" with the whole 
heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you wish to dispel the 
darkness you will bring in a light ; if you desire to kill 
weeds most effectively you will sow the ground with whole- 
some grass ; and in like manner, if you would keep evil out 
of your hearts you must get the Lord Jesus Christ into 
them. You all know what affection for and trust in a per- 
son have done in common life to produce prompt decision 
and persistent action. Every scholar remembers the in- 
stance of that true wife, Penelope, who for long years turned 
away suitors for her hand, and was ultimately rewarded by 
the return of Ulysses, who had manifested a constancy and 
affection that were equal to her own. Now, if in domestic 
life such effects are produced by these two principles, love 
and trust — which are not so much two as one working in 
two different ways — may we not believe that by the grace of 
the Holy Spirit, personal attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ 
and implicit trust in him, will give us quickness of sight to 
see what he would have us to do, and firmness of purpose to 
do that with our might? Nothing is so clear-sighted as love. 
It is on the alert at the approach of the slightest danger; and 
if only we take care to continue in the love of Christ, that 
will keep us right, for it will reveal the tempter to us even 



Tempted but Triumphant. 57 

under his most cunning disguise, and give us courage and 
firmness to withstand him. Nay, more, let us but have the 
love of Christ strong within us, and we shall not think that 
there is anything like a sacrifice or a hardship in saying '* no " 
to sin, for we shall have no hankering after that which he 
disapproves. Our refusal to sin will be, then, only the out- 
working of our satisfaction with him ; the consequence of our 
delight in him, and not the result of any outward compul- 
sion. Here, young man, is the key to the whole position: 
fill the heart with Christ, and when the tempter comes he 
will find it so preoccupied that there is no room in it for 
him and his seduction. 

But we may learn, in the third place, from this history, 
that we should not be surprised to find that our adherence 
to the right is followed at first by great hardship. Poor 
Joseph ! what must he have thought when he found him- 
self in the dungeon? Had God forgotten him? If not, 
how came he to be in such a miserable plight ? Was there 
any God at all ? If so, how was such treatment of an in- 
nocent man consistent with rectitude? Would it not have 
been better for him to have yielded and taken the short cut 
to affluence and ease? To what end should he make a 
point of resisting temptation if the temptress continues to 
enjoy her luxury, and the innocent resister of her will is cast 
into a dungeon? Ah ! this is the very trial in a trial when 
it tempts us to distrust God, or to think that he has forsaken 
us ; and it may be that Joseph felt it keenly for a season, 
even as it was felt by the author of the 73d Psalm and the 
sweet singer of the 37th. Admirably has one said here, "It 
is this which has made the world seem so terrible a place to 
many — that the innocent must so often suffer for the guilty, 
and that without appeal the pure and loving must He in 
chains and bitterness, while the wdcked live and see good 
days. It is this that has made men most despairingly ques- 



58 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

tion whether there be, indeed, a God in heaven who knows 
who the real culprit is, and yet suffers a terrible doom slowly 
to close around the innocent; who sees where the guilt lies, 
and yet moves no finger nor speaks the word that would 
bring justice to light, shaming the secure triumph of the 
wrong-doer, and saving the bleeding spirit from its agony. 
It was this that came as the last stroke of the passion of our 
Lord that he was numbered among the transgressors ; it 
was this that caused, or materially increased, the feeling that 
God had deserted him ; and it was this that wrung from 
him the cry which once was wrung from David, and may 
well have been wrung from Joseph, when, cast into the 
dungeon as a mean and treacherous villain, whose freedom 
w^as the peril of domestic peace and honor, he found him- 
self again helpless and forlorn, regarded now not as a mere 
worthless lad, but as a criminal of the lowest type. And as 
there always recur cases in which exculpation is impossible, 
just in proportion as the party accused is possessed of hon- 
orable feeling, and where silent acceptance of doom is the 
result, not of convicted guilt, but of the very triumph of self- 
sacrifice, we must beware of over-suspicion and injustice."^ 
But when we find ourselves in such circumstances, what 
is to be done ? Nothing, but wait God's time and persevere 
in our integrity. We must not judge God for what we see of 
his providence on a small scale. We must take wide views 
of it, and when we do that we shall find that in the long rim 
he brings forth men's righteousness as the light and their 
judgment as the noonday, so that the evil-doer is punished 
and the virtuous man rewarded. And even if in some cases 
we should not see that, we must widen our view still further 
and take in eternity; then, understanding the end of the 
wicked, we shall not begrudge them the little time during 

* Marcus Dods, D. D. : ** Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph," pp. 176, 177. 



Tempted but Triumphant. 59 

which on earth they enjoy their good things. But more than 
all we must get above the merely utilitarian view of things, 
and adhere to the right because it is the right, not simply 
because it is the profitable. I desire to give especial em- 
phasis to this last consideration, since, as it seems to me, 
there is a strong disposition among many in these days to 
test everything by profit. Thus we have the question pressed 
on our attention, "Is life worth living ?" as if it were a mere 
question of gain; whereas the right is an eternal and im- 
mutable thing, and is to be adhered to at whatsoever sac- 
rifice, just because it is right. There is no profit like a 
good conscience, and no reward equal to the approbation of 
God. It were well, therefore, if some of our would-be mor- 
alists to-day had as much clearness of perception on these 
subjects as the great Scottish novelist, who thus writes in 
his final introduction to "Ivanhoe:" "The character of the 
fair Jewess found so much favor in the eyes of some fair 
readers that the writer was censured because, when arranging 
the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned 
the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less inter- 
esting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of 
the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the au- 
thor may, in passing, observe that he thinks a character of a 
highly virtuous nature degraded rather than exalted by an 
attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is 
not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy 
of suffering merit; and it is a fatal doctrine to teach young 
persons, the most common readers of romance, that rectitude 
of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, 
or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions 
or the attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous 
and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, 
greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly-formed 
passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be 



6o Joseph the Prime-minister. 

apt to say, verily virtue has had its reward. But a glance on 
the great picture of life will show that the duties of self-de- 
nial and the sacrifice of passion to principle are seldom thus 
remunerated, and that the internal consciousness of their 
high-minded discharge of duty produces on their own re- 
flections a more adequate recompense in the form of that 
peace which the world cannot give or take away." The up- 
shot of it all, then, is that we must adhere to the right for its 
own sake, irrespective of what may be the consequence of 
our doing so ; that, as Faber says, we should be willing *^ to 
lose with God," because w^e can see that '• he is on the field 
when he is most invisible," and that we should still hold fast 
our conviction that 

" Right is right, since God is God, 
And right the day must win ; 
To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin." 

Not for what we can make by it, or for what it is worth, but 
for what it is, and for its relationship to God, let us do the 
right, and we may rest assured, however it may be now, that 
in the end we shall be on the winning side. We may have 
to go through a prison to the final issue, or we may need to 
step up to it from a cross, but we shall be on the winning side, 
for character is success — not position, not prosperity, not 
reputation — but character, and // is made and hardened and 
tempered in the fire of trial. When Joseph stepped out of 
the prison into the chariot of the ruler over all the land of 
Egypt, it seemed a sudden rise, but it was in reality only a 
revelation of the greatness which had already shown itself 
in his inflexible adherence to purity before the severest temp- 
tation. Leave the reputation and the success, then, to look 
after themselves, and be not disconcerted if they should both 
be for a time under a cloud ; but look well to the charac- 
ter, for that is the main thing, and the life that secures that 
for Christ is always worth living. 



V. 

THE TWO PRISONERS, 
Gen. xl. 

WHILE Joseph was in charge of the royal prison, un- 
der the direction of its principal keeper, two officers 
of the court were consigned to his custody by the captain of 
the guard. This last named dignitary was either Potiphar 
or his successor in office. We have, however, no hint of any 
change, and so, perhaps, we may conclude that Joseph's mas- 
ter had come to look more favorably upon him, and was glad 
of an opportunity of showing that he had confidence in him. 
One is almost inclined to believe that he had become con- 
vinced of his servant's innocence of the offence with which 
he had been charged ; and though, in that case, it would 
have been simply right for Potiphar to have set him at lib- 
erty, we can well understand how the exposure which such 
an act would have made kept him from taking any steps in 
that direction; while he might be well enough pleased at 
seeing the mitigation of his sufferings, which had resulted 
from his elevation to a wardenship. 

The court officials who were intrusted to his care are called 
in the authorized versfion " the chief butler " and " the chief 
baker,'' but these titles give us no adequate idea of the dig- 
nity of the positions which they occupied. Literally rendered, 
the phrases are, " the chief of the cup-bearers " and " the 
chief of the cooks." The first of these held an office of great 
importance, which gave him the ear of the monarch even in 
his most unbending moments, and thus enabled him to ex- 



62 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ercise great influence wilh him. We see something of its 
value at a later date in the case of Nehemiah, who held a 
similar position in the palace of Artaxerxes ; and in that of 
Rabshakeh, whose very name implies that he stood in the 
same relation to the King of Assyria. The duty of this offi- 
cer was to present the cup to the king after having tasted a 
portion of its contents, and so made sure that they were 
not poisoned ; but his facilities for intercourse with the mon- 
arch made him particularly sought after by interested parties 
as a mediator between them and the king, and so he was apt 
to be mixed up with all manner of cabals and intrigues. 
The "chief of the cooks," again, superintended the prepara- 
tion of the king's food. We saw that Potiphar, much as he 
had trusted Joseph, would not allow even him to meddle 
with his food, and from that little incident we may learn 
how implicit must have been the confidence of the monarch 
in this official. Wilkinson has given a long and elaborate 
account of the preparation and serving of an Egyptian din- 
ner, gleaned from the paintings on the monuments, but it 
would serve no good purpose to reproduce it here. Suffice 
it to say, that the kitchen in all its departments was directly 
and immediately under the care of him who is called in this 
history " the chief baker." 

The particular crime which was laid to the charge of these 
two officials is not specified, though some have conjectured 
that it was an attempt to poison the king , and the fact that 
they had both to do with the supply of his table, gives at 
least plausibility to the opinion. But from the punishment 
w-hich ultimately fell upon the chief baker, we may be sure 
that it was of an aggravated character, and probably it in- 
volved an attempt of some description on the monarch's life. 
In any case, they were in such suspense as to their fate that 
their anxiety gave a direction to their dreams; and one morn- 
ing both of them awoke with a peculiarly vivid recollection 



The Two Prisoners. 6;^ 

of what they had seen in their dreams, and a profound im- 
pression that there was some special significance in their 
visions. Indeed, they had the feeling that if they could only 
get the interpretation of them, they would have in that the 
revelation of what was before them. Nor was this idea al- 
together unnatural, for among all nations at that time, and 
for long after, it was generally believed that dreams were 
media through which divine communications were made, 
and in all great centres of influence there were men of rec- 
ognized learning, whose special office it was to explain the 
meaning of such visions. Homer, in a well-known passage, 
says that a dream is from Jupiter ; and elsewhere he relates 
how the mind of Jove was communicated to Agamemnon in 
a vision. I do not imagine, indeed, that every dream was 
counted worthy of attention, but when the impression pro- 
duced by a dream was one that could not be shaken off, we 
can readily understand that some special significance would 
be connected with it, and that it would be regarded as a 
divine revelation. We cannot affirm that this view was al- 
ways right, but that it was sometimes correct is evident from 
the cases before us, as well as from those of Pharaoh and 
Nebuchadnezzar; and even yet it is a question very difficult 
to answer in a definite manner, whether any significance, or 
if any, how much is to be attributed to any of the visions 
of the night. We all allow that God may and does influ- 
ence the workings of our minds through the operation of the 
laws of suggestion or association while we are awake ; tlor it 
is impossible to hold in any intelligible fashion the doctrine 
of the agency of the Holy Spirit unless we make such an 
admission. But if God can thus influence our minds when 
we are awake, it is equally easy for him to do so while we 
are asleep, so that there is no antecedent impossibility 
against the view that he may speak to men in and through 
the visions of the night. 



64 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Again, the providence of God must take cognizance of 
our dreams as well as of our waking thoughts, and must be 
equally in and over both, otherwise it is not really universal. 
Hence there is nothing either absurd or unphilosophical or 
impious in supposing that God may avail himself of the 
phenomena of dreams for the purpose of turning the mind 
to his truthj or leading it into some particular direction. 
How he does that it is impossible to say. Sleep is a mys- 
ter}', and dreams are a mystery, and to them both we may 
apply the words of Hamlet, "There are more things in 
heaven and earth than have been dreamed of in philoso- 
phy;" while, whatever may be said of dreams in general, we 
are probably not wrong in believing that the visions here 
recorded were from the Lord. 

The chief butler and the chief baker, at least, had the 
conviction that their dreams were prophetic, and therefore 
we cannot wonder that when Joseph, came to them in the 
morning he found them looking sad; and, acquainted as 
he was with sorrow in his own experience, it was quite nat- 
ural for him to express his sympathy by asking, " Where- 
fore look ye so sadly to-day?*' In response to his inquiry 
they said, ''We have dreamed a dream, and there is no in- 
terpreter of it;'' and he answered, **Do not interpretations 
belong to God ? Tell me them, I pray you." Not that he 
claimed to be God, but that he had within him the con- 
sciousness that now his opportunity had come, and that God 
would enable him to take advanta2:e of it bv 2:iving: him the 
insight for the exposition of their visions. And we cannot 
but feel that in this faith of his we have the secret of Jo- 
seph's greatness. Many a man, having had his experience 
of dreams, would have said to these prisoners, '* Think no 
more about them; they are mere delusions. I too have had 
my dreams; and once they seemed to me prophetic, but they 
have only mocked me, and it v/ill be the same v.'ith you." 



The Two Prisoners. 65 

But no, he was holding himself up by his faith in God^s rev- 
elation to himself, made long ago through the bowing sheaves 
and the reverential stars, and he would not make light of 
what had been similarly revealed to other men. With far- 
reaching suggestiveness, a thoughtful preacher has here said,* 
"Joseph's willingness to interpret the dreams of his fel- 
low-prisoners proves that he still believed in his own; that 
. among his other qualities he had this characteristic also of 
ia steadfast and profound soul, that he * reverenced as a man 
the dreams of his youth.' Had he not done so, and had he 
not yet hoped that somehow God would bring truth out of 
them, he would surely have said, 'Don't you believe in 
dreams ; they will only get you into difficulties.' He would 
have said, what some of us could dictate from our own 
thoughts, 'I won't meddle with dreams any more; I am not 
so young as I once w^as; doctrines and principles that served 
for fervent romantic youth seem puerile now, w^hen I have 
learned what human life actually is. I can't ask this man, who 
knows the world, and has held the cup for Pharaoh, and is 
aw^are what a practical shape the king's anger takes, to cher- 
ish hopes similar to those which often seem so remote and 
doubtful to myself. My religion has brought me into trou- 
ble ; it has lost me my situation; it has kept me poor; it 
has made me despised ; it has debarred me from enjoyment. 
Can I ask this man to trust to inward whisperings which 
have so misled me ? No ! no ! let every man bear his own 
burden. If he wishes to become religious, let not me bear 
the responsibility; if he will dream, let him find some other 
interpreter." But not thus did he speak to the two heart- 
stricken captives; and in offering to become the interpreter 
of their dreams he takes another step towards the fulfilment 
of his own. Had he ridiculed their visions, then, so far as 

* Dr. Marcus Dod's " Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph," pp. 180, i8i« 



66 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

we can see, he might have remained in the prison till his 
death; but by the course he took, inspired as that was by 
faith in God, he showed that he still regarded his own vis- 
ions as full of Divine significance, and took the way that led 
to their verification. 

When they heard his words of sympathy, the dreamers 
told him their visions. We need not go into them in detail, 
save to show how the dream of each rooted itself in and 
grew out of his former occupation, and how they are illus- 
trated in almost every particular by the representations 
found in these later years on the Egyptian monuments. 
Thus Wilkinson tells us that the tombs at the Pyramids 
show us pictures delineating grapes in the process of being 
picked from the vines and put into baskets, and letting us 
see the preparation of the grape-juice, from its being pressed 
out of the clusters to its being stored in jars. That ferment- 
ed wine was drunk is evident from the paintings offcasts, as 
also from the condition of the women, to the representation 
of whom I referred in my last lecture; while, that I may not 
seem to be ungallant, it must be added that portraitures of 
men in a state of helpless intoxication are not unknown. 
The kings, however, who were under the special regulation 
of the priests, had their allowance fixed, and the kind of 
wine they were to drink prescribed; and the representation 
in the dream is literally in accord with a text "discovered 
by Ebers in the inscriptions of the Temple of the Edfu, in 
which the king is seen standing, cup in hand, while under- 
neath are the words, ' They press grapes into the water and 
the king drinks.' ""^ 

In the dream of the chief baker, we have similar resem- 
blances to what we find on the monuments. Even so tri- 
fling a detail as the baked meats being said to be carried 

* Geike's " Hours with the Bible," vol. i., p. 465. 



The Two Prisoners. 67 

on the head is true to Egyptian life ; for while men generally 
carried their burdens less often on their heads than other- 
wise, bakers were a marked exception, and there are actual 
instances in which confectioners are portrayed with baskets 
on their heads. A papyrus of the age when the Hebrews 
were in Egypt names four of Pharaoh's bakers, of whom one 
is always called ^the chief,' and the importance of his office 
may be judged from the fact that no fewer than 114,064 
loaves are said to have been delivered by him at a particu- 
lar time to the royal store-rooms." "^ 

The dream of the cup-bearer was interpreted by Joseph to 
mean that within three days he would be restored to his 
office; and, showing the implicitness of his faith in the truth 
of the revelation, he accompanied his explanation with this 
pathetic statement and wistful request — " But think on me 
when it shall be well with thee, and shew^ kindness, I pray 
thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and 
bring me out of this house ; for indeed I was stolen away 
out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also have I done 
nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.'' Ah ! 
yes, captivity is still captivity, though the slave be set over 
other slaves; a prison is still a prison, though the prisoner 
be intrusted in it with the charge of others; and this plaintive 
appeal lets us see deep down in Joseph's heart to the very 
quick of his distress. 

The dream of the chief cook, to his great disappointment 
— for his expectations were raised by the good things fore- 
told to his companion — was explained by Joseph to mean 
"that in three days he should be hanged upon a tree, and 
his body left to be eaten by the birds." And both proved 
to be prophetic ; for the third day was Pharaoh's birthday, 
and that was always celebrated among the Egyptians with 

* Geike, ubi sitpra^ vol. i. p. 467, 



68 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

great festivity. Thus we learn from Geike that " an inscrip- 
tion of the time of the Exodus tells us of Rameses II. that 
his birthday caused joy in heaven. The priests of every 
class assembled in the temples, an amnesty was granted to 
prisoners, and a great feast was held worthy of a monarch 
who was worshipped by his subjects. Under color of re- 
calling the glories of the past year, the priesthood took the 
opportunity of renewing their hold on him by flattering but 
significant addresses; after which, surrounded by all his 
court and the dignitaries of the temples, he dispensed his 
grace or favors as he thought fit.""^ 

The punishment dealt out to the chief baker was very se- 
vere. He was first beheaded, and then his body was gibbet- 
ed upon a pole and left to be devoured by the birds. The 
terror of this to an Egyptian was tremendous ; for in his be- 
lief, as, indeed, is manifest from the embalming of the dead, 
the preservation of the body was essential to continued ex- 
istence after death, and the leaving of it to be destroyed was, 
therefore, fatal to all hopes of a happy eternity. As Geike 
says, '' Beheading, preceded by beating with sticks, was a 
common punishment, but refusal of embalmment was only 
pronounced against extraordinary offenders. To leave the 
body to be eaten by the dogs was the most terrible item in 
the punishment of the treacherous wife in the ^Tale of the 
Two Brothers.' ^'t 

So the two men passed out on the third morning from the 
prison, one to the palace and the other to the gibbet, and 
Joseph remained behind, waiting in the heart -sickness of 
^Miope deferred " for some result from the intercession of the 
chief cup-bearer with Pharaoh on his behalf. But alas for 
the ingratitude of men ! the chapter ends with these doleful 

* Geike's " Hours with the Bible," vol. i., p. 468. 
t Geike, /^/y., p. 487. 



The Two Prisoners. 69 

words, "Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph but 
forgat him.'' 

Now, in seeking to turn the incidents of this portion of 
the narrative to profitable account, we find some important 
truths suggested for our consideration. 

In the first place, we cannot but be struck with the minute 
particularity of the providence of God. Indeed, this is the 
one great truth which, as we shall see, runs like a thread 
through the whole of this history, and on which all its inci- 
dents are strung; so that we might use Joseph's own words 
as a motto for it all — " Ye thought evil against me, but God 
meant it unto good." Think of the coincidence which brought 
the Ishmaelites to the spot at which his brothers were feast- 
ing, at the very moment when he was in the pit hard by. 
Think, again, of his being bought, of all people in Egypt, by 
Potiphar, the captain of the guard, and of his being cast into 
the prison, for no fault of his own, but on a false accusation, 
and of his being still there at the very time when these two 
high officials of the court were consigned by Pharaoh to the 
same place of confinement. Behold at how^ many critical 
points his life touches the lives of others, and is, thereby, 
carried so much the farther forward towards the attainment 
by him of the place which God was preparing for him. Sup- 
pose we found these things in a novel, we should say that 
they were all designed by its author for the development and 
unravelment of what he calls his plot. Very well. But is 
there no plot in a human life ? How else shall we account 
for the appearance of a plot in fiction — which is meant to be 
a delineation of life — and which, wherever it is a work of true 
genius, is a delineation of life, if there be not in every hu- 
man life that which corresponds to a plot? Is it not true, 
as Dr. Bushnell has said in one of his w^onderful sermons, 
that " every man's life is a plan of God ?" and if one were 
to say to you that such coincidences are only found in nov- 



70 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

els, could you not say to him, "It is not so, for I have met 
them in my own career?'' I know, at least, that I have 
had as wonderful things in that way in my own experience 
as I ever read of in fiction ; and if in the fiction I must trace 
them to the plan of the author, why must I be debarred in 
real life from tracing them to the plan of God ? When I get 
to a great railway junction, and find trains coming in togeth- 
er from the east, and the north, and the south, just in time 
to join another that is starting from that point for the west, 
I should be regarded as a simpleton if I spoke of that as a 
wonderful coincidence. And yet, on the great Railroad of 
Life, when I come to such a junction, and meet there a train 
that leads me on to some significant sphere of service, I am 
supposed to be a simpleton if I refer that to the overruling 
providence of God. But I am not a simpleton — I am only 
reasoning in that department as I would in the domain of 
literature or daily travelling; and he who repudiates God's 
providence is the fool, according to that scathing utterance 
of the Psalmist — "The/^^/hath said in his heart there is no 
God." 

But, in the second place, we are reminded by this history 
also that the character of the individual has as much to do 
with what I have called the development of the plot of his 
life as the plan or purpose of God has. Providence is not 
fatalism. Joseph, if he had chosen to act otherwise than he 
did, might have thrown away all the opportunities which these 
places of junction in his life afforded him. If he had stormed 
against his brothers with violent resistance, they might have 
been provoked to slay him out of hand ; but his demeanor 
of patience and meekness moved Reuben to seek to save his 
life. If, again, in the house of Potiphar, he had been, as we 
phrase it, '^ugly " and ill-tempered, determined, because he 
was a slave, and unjustly deprived of his liberty, that he 
would make everybody uncomfortable around him, he would 



The Two Prisoners. 71 

never have risen to any honor or eminence in his master's 
house, but would have been set to do the lowest and most 
degrading menial work. If, again, when his temptation came 
to him, he had sinfully yielded, he never would have been 
consigned to the prison, and would have had no opportunity 
of serving the cup-bearer. Nay, if he had not made himself 
useful and agreeable in the prison, he would have had no 
chance of rendering the service which is here recorded — a 
service which, as Joseph himself seemed to feel, and which, 
as we know from the subsequent history, had so much to do 
with his ultimate elevation to the second place in the king- 
dom. Thus, the character of Joseph was here a coworker 
with the providence of God. He fell in with God's plan. 
He had educated himself so that he could see the chance — 
speaking after the manner of men — when it came, and could 
use it to the highest advantage. And by all this he was 
steadily preparing himself for the place which God in his 
plan was preparing for him. Again then, I say, providence 
is not fatalism, and if you would avail yourself of the oppor- 
tunities which God furnishes you at the critical turnings of 
your history, you must w^atch your character, and seek so to 
meet everything as from him, and so to serve him in every- 
thing, that when the important time arrives you can recog- 
nize its value, and improve it for his glory in your own ad- 
vancement. The men that fail in life do not fail for want 
of such opportunities as Joseph had, but for want of the 
character to see these opportunities, and the ability to use 
them. Keep near to God, therefore, form your character 
according to his principles, and then, even though you may 
be in a prison, you will find a way to serve him, and will feel 
that somehow you are on the road to your success, and in 
training for your sphere. 

But, in the third place, w^e may learn that those who have 
been themselves upheld in trouble, are the most efficient 



J 2 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

helpers of others when they are in trial. Young as Joseph 
was, he had seen enough of sorrow to dispose him to sym- 
pathize with others in their affliction. And in the suggestive 
question which he put to his fellow-prisoners, " Do not inter- 
pretations belong to God ?" he not only expresses his own 
faith, but in the most delicate and skilful manner indicates 
to them the source whence alone true consolation comes. 
His faith in God had been grievously tried. He had been 
plunged into affliction, and as the direct and immediate re- 
sult of his adherence to the course of purity and rectitude, 
he had been cast into a prison. Yet he still held fast his 
confidence in Jehovah, and it was that faith which made him 
such a cheerful comforter of others. There was a great sor- 
row in his heart, but his firm conviction that God was order- 
ing his life, made him outwardly happy in spite of that; and 
only on such an occasion as that of his appeal to the cup- 
bearer w^as any reference made to it by him. But the con- 
sciousness that it was there, opened his ear in compassion 
for the reception of the story of another^s woe. Yes, it is 
only through suffering that we learn to sympathize, and that, 
I think, is what the sacred writer specially refers to when he 
says even of Christ that "he was made perfect through suf- 
fering." " The Lord God gave him the tongue of the learned 
that he might know to speak a word in season to him that is 
weary." But he gave it to him not as a ready-made endow- 
ment. He gave it to him through days of exhaustive manual 
labor at Nazareth ; through privations as he went over Pal- 
estine with nowhere to lay his head; through satanic temp- 
tations in the wilderness; through the bitter ingratitude and 
malicious attacks of men ; through the agony of the garden 
and the ignominy of the cross — so that it could be said re- 
garding him, "In that he himself hath suffered being tempt- 
ed, or tried, he is able to succor them that are tried." And 
it is with the disciples as it was with the master. The great- 



The Two Prisoners. 73 

est sufferers among them are those best quahfied to sympa- 
thize. 

More than thirty years ago, just at the beginning of my 
ministry, I was in the house of a beloved pastor, when he 
was called to pass through the greatest trial that a man 
can know, in the death of a truly good and noble wife. Two 
mornings after, the postman brought in a sheaf of letters. 
I think there were more than twenty of them, but each was 
from a brother minister who had been ledtJu^ough the sainedark 
valley^ and who was seeking to comfort him with the comfort 
wherewith himself had been comforted of God. Only a few 
evenings ago I met a Christian lady, with whom I was com- 
paring notes regarding the experience of the loss of little 
children, and she said to me, " I never see the death of a lit- 
tle child announced in the newspaper but I have an impulse 
to write to the parents and speak comfortably to them.'' 
Thus we may console ourselves under our own trials with 
the thought that God is endowing us thereby with the gift of 
sympathy, and fitting us to become " sons of consolation" to 
others in affliction. You wonder, perhaps, at the tenderness 
of sympathy which some friend evinces; you are astonished 
how he should know to speak just the right things to you in 
your trial, but if you were familiar with his history, you would 
cease to be surprised, for he is only repeating to you what 
God wrote upon his own heart in the day when he was him- 
self in trouble. 

But that thought reminds me to add that mere suffering 
will not give us the gift of consolation unless we have our- 
selves been sustained by God through our affliction. We 
can say, then, that the anchor which held us in the storm 
will hold others, and that saying has more staying power in 
it than if we were merely to direct the troubled one to use 
an anchor which we had never proved. When you are in 
the prison, therefore, remember that you are there not sim- 

4 



74 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ply for your own sake, to prepare you for the post that you 
are yet to fill, but for the sake of others, that you may learn 
to speak a word in season to those who shall be in it after 
}'ou. In the Tower of London the walls of some of its cham- 
bers are all written over with inscriptions made by prisoners, 
and some of these are of the most touching character, such 
as I doubt not gave much comfort to those who read them 
just before their own execution. And so it seems to me 
that in our trials God leads us through experiences which 
shall enable us, by their mere rehearsal, to uphold others 
when they come to be in like circumstances. The price is 
costly, but the learning is precious. 

Finally, we are reminded that those whom we benefit have 
often very poor remembrance cf our kindness. Men too 
often write the record of grudges in marble and of favors in 
water. If one has done us an injury we do not easily for- 
get that, but if we have received a benefit \\q let the remem- 
brance of that slip out of our minds. Nay, such is the per- 
versity of human nature, that not unfrequently men return 
evil for the good w^iich has been done them. One spoke to 
an English statesman of the violent enmity which another 
evinced towards him. ** Yes," w^as the reply, "and I cannot 
understand it, for I never did him any kindness that I can 
remember." The sarcasm w^as bitter, but there was enough 
of truth in it to give it point ; and every one who seeks to be 
a helper of others learns, sooner or later, to give over look- 
ing for human gratitude, and to think mainly of the Lord 
Jesus Christ and his appreciation. If you tread upon a ten- 
der toe you will be sure to hear of that ; but if you have been 
helpful to another, if you have been the means of giving him 
hope and joy and inspiration, if you have lifted him out of 
the slough of despondency and sent him on his way, you may 
never know anything about that until it be revealed to you 
at last by the Lord. Ah ! this chief butler has had too many 



The Two Prisoners. 



75 



like him in all ages. The return of prosperity makes men 
forget the benefactors of their adversity. What then ? Why 
should we whimper over that ? — the more especially as there 
is one, and he the Best and Highest of all, who stands out in 
striking contrast to all such as this cup-bearer represents. 
Elevation has changed many a man's heart and turned many 
a man's head. But "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to- 
day, and forever f the same on the throne of glory that he 
was on earth eighteen hundred years ago. He will remem- 
ber us, and whatsoever we do for him in the service of our 
fellow-men, however they may forget it, will be acknowledged 
by him. He remembers us now, for he is making interces- 
sion for us ; and he will recognize us at the last, for " the cup 
of cold water given to a disciple in the name of a disciple 
shall in no wise lose its reward." What matters human in- 
gratitude, then, when we have divine recognition ? Endure 
the prison a little longer. The chariot and the throne will 
be here erelong. 



VI. 

ELEVATION AT LENGTH. 
Gen. xli., 1-46. 

FOR two full years after the restoration of the cup-bearer 
to his office Joseph Vemained in the prison, occupying 
the position to which, for his trustworthiness and integrity, 
he had been raised. But although this delay was due to 
the ungrateful forgetfulness of the man to whom he had 
shown so much kindness, and for whose intercession with 
the monarch he had so touchingly made request; and al- 
though that official was really blameworthy for his neglect; 
yet the overruling providence of God is clearly seen, both 
in the occasion on which, and the time at which Joseph's 
services were recalled to the remembrance of the butler, 
and brought by him to the notice of the king. For if im- 
mediately after his own release, and apart from the pros- 
pect of Joseph's being able to render his majesty a service, 
in a time of great anxiety, which no one else could perform, 
the cup-bearer had reported Joseph's case to the king, it does 
not seem that Pharaoh would have done more for him than 
transfer him to some other department in which he would 
have been still a slave, or at the most give him liberty to re- 
turn to Canaan, to his father's house and the persecution of 
his brothers, and in either case he would have gone forth to 
obscurity. As it was, however, when the door of the prison 
opened for him, he went straight out to that opportunity, by 
the improvement of which he rose at once to the second 



Elevation at Length. 77 

place in the greatest kingdom which was then upon the earth. 
Thus, through the apparently long delay, he got all the soon- 
er to his destination in the end; and that which seemed to 
hold him back a dreary while from his promotion really ex- 
pedited his elevation. Now, in all this we have a lesson 
which is especially valuable to you, young men. You may 
be conscious that you have it in you to do great things in the 
w^orld. You also may have had your dreams of rising to 
some post of honor and usefulness in the city or in the land, 
and you may have the assurance that these are prophetic of 
what you are yet to become. But just at present you may 
be in a position in which it is impossible for you to take any 
steps for your advancement. You, too, have been disap- 
pointed in finding that those whom you have served, and on 
whose influence you had counted for the securing of some- 
thing nobler, have entirely forgotten you. You are longing 
for an opportunity to better yourself, but there is no appar- 
ent outlet for you. Without being immured in a dungeon, 
you are yet virtually in a prison; for you are hemmed in by 
circumstances, and chained by limitations. You are as high 
as you can ever reach where you are, and you cannot change 
your place. What then ? Learn from Joseph here to bide 
your time, or, rather, to wait God's time. Serve him a little 
longer where you are, and by-and-by he will set before you 
"an open door " which no man can shut, and through which 
you will pass at once to the place which is emphatically and 
peculiarly your own. Your strength meanwhile, therefore, is 
to sit still. Be patient until it is God's time for you to rise, 
and when that comes no power will be able to hold you 
dow^n. As the Prayer-book version of the old Psalm has it, 
"Tarry the Lord's leisure.'' Make haste slowly. Do the 
duties of your present sphere. Remember that '' all things 
come to the feet of him who waits," provided only he works 
and prays while he w^aits. Ambition pants for greatness; 



7? Joseph the Prime-minister. 

but piety sanctifies ambition, so that it is content to wait 
until it can rise in GocFs time and by God's way. 

Nor must we lose sight of the fact that by those years of 
prison life, as well as by the temptation and privations by 
which they were preceded, Joseph's character was steadied 
into strength and ripened into maturity, so that when his 
opportunity came he used it with splendid effect. They did 
for him what his forty years in Midian did for Moses, and 
his eighteen months in Arabia did for Paul. They threw 
him in upon himself, and back upon God. They disci- 
plined him into calm self-possession, because they gave him 
a strong hold upon Jehovah. The forgetfulness of men led 
him to rely all the more implicitly on the memory of God. 
It might be a trial to him — it no doubt was at first — to see 
the man whose dream he had interpreted go out at once to 
its fulfilment, while he had waited many long years for the 
realization of his own, and seemed as far from it as ever, 
nay, farther than ever. But however much he might yield, 
to such feelings for a time, the sequel proves that he had 
ultimately risen above them. Abraham had to wait long for 
Isaac; Isaac had to wait long for the birth of his sons; Ja- 
cob had to spend twenty years in Padan-aram before the 
coming of that Peniel night which secured him in the cove- 
nant inheritance. What was he better than they, that he 
should have an immediate fulfilment of the promise made 
to him? So his knowledge of the experience of his ances- 
tors came now to his assistance, and long before Isaiah's 
day he found out for himself Isaiah's principle, "He that 
believeth shall not make haste." Many a man in his cir- 
cumstances would have become cynical and misanthropic, 
saying, " To what purpose do I serve others if they so forget 
my service?" but his suffering sent him to Jehovah, and in 
fellowship with him he not only retained that disposition to 
help others, which was so distinct a feature of his earlier 



Elevation at Length. 79 

days, but also acquired that calm, resolute equipoise of spirit 
which he so conspicuously manifested in his later life. They 
say that the palm-tree grows stronger the heavier the weight 
that is put upon it; so, when a man cleaves to God, diffi- 
culty only disciplines him into greatness, and imprisonment 
only teaches him how to make the best of his liberty. 

Remark, too, that all this was the result of God's over- 
ruling the sinful forgetfulness of a man. Many would limit 
God's providence to things which come directly from his 
hand. Only the other day a sufferer, to my surprise, de- 
clined my offer to pray with him, because his suffering, as he 
said, was the result of a human blunder, and was to be got 
rid of simply by rectifying that. But here God's providence 
both overruled a human sin and brought good out of it; and 
the Lord is always working yet in the same way. I have 
heard, too, of one reproving a servant after this fashion : '^ If 
it were a dispensation of Providence, I could bear it; but I 
can have no patience with your stupidity "- — as if there had 
been no providence in his having such a servant, and there 
were no duty devolving on him in consequence. But all 
such views are reproved by the history before us, in which 
we see that in some inscrutable but real way God brings 
good out of evil, and makes even the mistakes and sins of 
men to work out his will in the disciplining and elevating 
of his people. Ah! it is a wonderful thing, this providence 
of God, and if we only fully believed in it we should know 
a little more of what Paul means when he speaks of "the 
peace of God that passeth all understanding" keeping our 
hearts and minds. . 

But now came the time for the revelatioa of Joseph's great- 
ness. Nothing unusual seemed to herald its approach, and 
for all that appears to the contrary, Joseph was taken una- 
wares. But that only made the test of his character the more 
searching, for it showed him as he really was, and he did 



8o Joseph the Prime-minister. 

not suffer from the manifestation. All the officials about 
the household of the captain of the guard might be excited 
by the hasty appearance of messengers from Pharaoh. There 
might be a flutter among the prisoners, as each one thought 
that the summons might be for him, and knew not whether 
it might mean that he should be restored to liberty or be 
put to death. But Joseph was all himself; and though "the 
king^s business required haste," he took time to prepare him- 
self by observing the proprieties which he knew to be re- 
quired of all who went in before the monarch. They were 
little things, and it might have been supposed that in the 
circumstances Pharaoh would have overlooked any breach 
of etiquette concerning them ; but Joseph did not neglect 
them, and by his attention to them he showed his real great- 
ness. For while it is the mark of a small mind to give its 
entire thought to such matters, it is by no means an indi- 
cation of superior intelligence to ignore them altogether; 
and few incidents in this entire history give us such a clear 
insight into the wisdom and self-possession, or what we may 
call presence of mind of Joseph, as the little thing here re- 
corded regarding him — that " he shaved himself and changed 
his raiment" before he went into the presence of the king. 
In regard to this matter of the toilet, the better classes of 
Egyptians were exceedingly punctilious. I quote the follow- 
ing sentences from Wilkinson"^ in illustration. " ' The Egyp- 
tians,' says Herodotus, ^only let the hair of their head and 
beard grow in mourning, being at all other times shaved ;' 
which agrees perfectly with the authority of the Bible, and 
of the sculptures. So particular, indeed, w^ere they on this 
point, that to have neglected it was a subject of reproach and 
ridicule ; and whenever they intended to convey the idea of 
a man of low condition, or a slovenly person, the artists rep- 

^ ''Ancient Egyptians," vol. ii., pp. 330, 331. 



Elevation at Length. 8i 

resented him with a beard. It is amusing to find that their 
love of caricature was not confined to the lower orders, but 
extended even to the king ; and the negligent habits of Ra- 
meses VII. are indicated on his tomb at Thebes by the ap- 
pearance of his chin, blackened by an unshorn beard of two 
or three days' growth. The same habits of cleanliness are 
also indicated by the changes of raiment given by Joseph to 
his brethren when they set out to bring their father to Egypt." 
By his attention to these matters, therefore, Joseph proved 
himself to be, in the true sense of the word, a "gentleman,'' 
who w^as willing in all minor things to conform to the usages 
of the society into which he w^as about to enter. 

But while he is thus preparing himself for standing before 
Pharaoh, we may take the opportunity of explaining why he 
came to be sent for in such haste. The case was this : The 
king in the same night had dreamed two dreams of such a 
peculiar sort that they filled his mind with anxiety as to the 
prosperity of the land over which he was the ruler. And 
any one in the least degree acquainted with the symbolism 
and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians will understand at 
once how he came to be so much excited by his visions. In 
the first he saw seven kine coming up out of the Nile in 
splendid condition, and feeding on the soft, succulent grass 
which grew in abundance on the margin of the river ; but 
after them came up other seven lean and ill-favored kine, 
which actually ate up the others. In the second he saw sev- 
en ears of corn, large and good, which again w^ere devoured 
by seven thin and blasted ears. Now here was the river 
which was recognized by them all as the great source of the 
fertility of the country ; here were cows which, in the mythol- 
ogy of the people, were the symbols of the productive power 
of the earth ; here also were ears of corn, themselves the 
fruits of that productive power ; evidently, therefore, the 
dreams w^ere such as not only concerned the welfare of the 

4* 



S2 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

country, but were also intimately related to each other; while 
the similar feature in each of them, that the one of the two 
groups of animals and ears was devoured by the other, might 
not obscurely indicate that they both referred to one and the 
same thing. Indeed, as with Joseph's interpretation of them 
before us we now read the account of these visions, we rather 
wonder that the magicians and the wise men should have 
been baffled by what seems to us so plain. But it is only 
another illustration of the truth so humorously enforced in 
the w^ell-known story of Columbus and the egg. It is easy 
to open a lock when you have found the key, but to find the 
key, or to make it, is the difficulty ; and by that difficulty, in 
this case, the learned men of the court were overcome. 
They could not tell the king the meaning of his visions. 

Naturally, that would only make his anxiety the greater; 
and every one who came into personal contact with him 
would be as troubled as he was himself. So the chief butler 
came to know of his perplexity, and immediately the similar- 
ity of the case to that of the chi^f baker and himself in the 
prison, recalled Joseph to his thoughts, so that he was moved 
to tell the king of his experience. The manner in which that 
was done by him is exceedingly adroit. He treads very 
lightly over the fact of his having been in prison at all, and 
he finishes his story without making any suggestion, leaving 
Pharaoh to draw his own inference and come to his own de- 
termination. But the effect was precisely that which he had 
anticipated, for the king sent at once for Joseph ; and the 
haste with which his servants acted on his commission is 
but an incidental corroboration of the fact that he was eager- 
ly impatient for the appearance of the man of whom he had 
just heard such a wonderful story. 

Behold, then, Joseph before the king ! He has just touched 
his thirtieth year, and the alertness of youth is still in his 
eyes and in his frame, but over his face there is ^Hhe pale 



Elevation at Length. S;^ 

cast of thought," and on his brow the development of a ma- 
turity beyond his age. Thirteen years have gone since that 
day when, in his gay apparel, he left his father's tent at He- 
bron, little more than a boy; but each of these cycles has 
left its own deposit of experience on his character, and given 
him a better knowledge at once of his God and of himself, 
so that he stands now unabashed before the majesty of 
Egypt. Pharaoh states the case to him, and says, "I have 
heard say of thee that thou canst understand a dream to in- 
terpret it," and he at once replied, ^' It is not in me; God 
shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." He would have 
no honor that did not belong to him, and he has one mes- 
sage both to the servants and the master. To them he had 
said — and that part of the conversation the chief butler had 
forgotten to report—" Do not interpretations belong to God ?" 
and to him he answers, " It is not in me ; God shall give 
Pharaoh an answer of peace." On the one hand humility, 
on the other faith. These two should always go together, 
and the union of the two secures the co-operation of Jehovah. 
After hearing the dreams, Joseph read at once the meaning 
of the symbols, and declared that the country was about tp 
enjoy seven good years, during which the land would yield 
unusually abundant crops,, but that they would be followed 
by seven consecutive years of exceptional scarcity, amount- 
ing even, as they advanced, to actual famine, during which 
the superabundance of the preceding time of plenty would 
be entirely consumed. He added that the doubling of the 
dream was "because the thing was established by God, and 
God would shortly bring it to pass."^ Then showing how 
thoroughly he believed in the truth of his own interpretation 
— which, indeed, must have at once commended itself to the 
acceptance of all who heard it — he went on to advise that 

* Verse 32. 



84 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Pharaoh should immediately take measures to provide against 
the danger of which he had been thus supernaturally warned. 
He suggested that the land should be divided into districts, 
and that over each of these a trusty officer should be placed, 
who should receive the fifth part of each year's produce, 
which was the government's portion, and should store that 
up in granaries in the cities against the coming time of fam- 
ine. There was so much practical wisdom evinced in the 
suggestion, and so much executive ability manifested in the 
manner in which it was proposed to carry it out, that Pha- 
raoh came to the conclusion that no time was fitter for ac- 
tion than the present, and no man better qualified to super- 
intend the whole business than Joseph himself. There and 
then, therefore, he raised Joseph to the second place in the 
kingdom, invested him with insignia appropriate to the office 
to which he had appointed him, made him ride in the sec- 
ond chariot which he had, sent him to make a formal tour 
of inspection over all the land, and caused everywhere a 
proclamation to be made before him to the effect that he 
should "rejoice greatly," or that he was a ''pure prince :" for 
there is some difference of opinion as to the meaning of the 
Egyptian word here wrongly translated, " Bow the knee /' and 
while some would make it signify '^ rejoice thou," others 
would interpret it as "pure prince." To complete his exal- 
tation, he was entered into the caste of the priests, and re- 
ceived in marriage Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, the 
priest of the great Temple of the Sun at On in Heliopolis, a 
city which stood on the eastern bank of the Nile, a few miles 
from Memphis, where there still exists an obelisk of red 
granite, with a dedication sculptured by a monarch belong- 
ing to the twelfth dynasty, which must, therefore, have been 
seen by Joseph on the occasion of his marriage, and by 
Moses when, as a student at the great seminary there, he 
was educated in all the wisdom and learning of the Egyptians. 



Elevation at Length. 85 

Besides these marks of honor, Joseph received a new name 
from the king — analogous to those which Daniel and his 
friends received, in a later age, from Nebuchadnezzar, and 
having some special appropriateness to the work which he 
was to perform. Different explanations have been given of 
its meaning. Some, like those who drew up the marginal 
readings of our Bible, understand by it " a revealer of secrets," 
but others, viewing the term as really an Egyptian word in 
Hebrew letters, have put it back again into its Egyptian form, 
getting, according to Brugsch, the meaning, " the governor of 
the abode of him who lives /^ or, according to Canon Cooke, 
whose dissertation in the " Speaker's Commentary " on the 
Egyptian words in the Pentateuch is of very great value, 
"the food of life,'^ or ''the food of the living.'' I am, of 
course, incompetent to judge between these scholars, but I 
wish you to note, as a mark of the age of this history, that 
we have here embedded in the Hebrew text Egyptian words 
in Hebrew letters, to which, in this late day, our Egyptolo- 
gists, who have learned the language from the inscriptions 
on the monuments, are able to give very definite and intelli- 
gible translations — a fact which scarcely comports with the 
notion now so popular with some, that this book is only a 
production of a very late date, composed, perhaps, eight hun- 
dred years after the events. But similar conformation of the 
age of this record may be found in the description of Jo- 
seph's investiture w^ith office as compared with the represent- 
ation of such ceremonies found upon the monuments. The 
history before us says, "And Pharaoh took off his ring from 
his hand and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in 
vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck." 
Now hear what Wilkinson tells us of the testimony of the 
monuments: "The investiture of a chief was a ceremony of 
considerable importance, when the post conferred was con- 
nected with any high dignity about the person of the mon- 



S6 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

arch, in the army or the priesthood. It took place in the 
presence of the sovereign seated on his throne; and two 
priests having arrayed the candidate in a long, loose vestr 
ure, placed necklaces around the neck of the person thus 
honored by the royal favor. One of these ceremonies fre- 
quently occurs in the monuments, which was sometimes 
performed immediately after a victory ; in which case we 
may conclude that the honor was granted in return for dis- 
tinguished services in the field ; and as the individual on 
all occasions holds the flabella, crook, and other insignia 
of the ofSce of fan-bearer, it appears to have been either the 
appointment to that post, or to some high command in the 
army. On receiving this honorable distinction he held forth 
his hands in token of respect, and raising the emblems of 
his newly acquired office above his head, he expressed his 
fidelity to his king, and his desire to prove himself worthy 
of the favor he had received. A similar mode of investiture 
appears to have been adopted in all appointments to the 
high offices of state, both of a civil and military kind. In 
this, as in many customs detailed in the sculptures, we find 
an interesting illustration of a ceremony mentioned in the 
Bible which describes Pharaoh taking a ring from his hand 
and putting it on Joseph's hand, arraying him in vestures of 
fine linen, and putting a gold chain about his neck.''^ And 
in another placet he says, '^The immense difference of rank 
between the king and the highest nobles of the land is shown 
by their all walking on foot in attendance on the chariot of 
the king. And part of the great honor conferred on Joseph 
was his being placed in the second chariot that the king 
had ; giving him, in fact, the attendance of a king, as no 
one had a chariot or car while attending; on a kins:." 



* Wilkinson's ** Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii., pp. 370, 371. 
t Ibid., vol. i,, p. 160. 



Elevation at Length. 87 

Two difficulties are apt to strike the common reader. He 
is prone to consider it either unnatural or improbable that 
Joseph should be thus suddenly elevated, and that he should 
consent in this matter-of-course way to marry a wife who 
had been selected for him by the monarch. But as to the 
first of these, it may be said that cases of unexpected eleva- 
tion are by no means uncommon in the East. We have 
other Scriptural illustrations of the same thing in the biogra- 
phies of Daniel and Mordecai; and even recent history is 
not without what may almost be called romantic instances 
of a similar sort. Thus Jamieson tells us^ that in 1852 the 
Prime-minister of Persia "was the son of a donkey driver, 
who rose, by the strength and energy of his character, to be 
the second man in rank, but really the first in power." Then, 
as to the marriage. Bishop Browne is right when he saysf 
that " neither the Egyptians nor the Hebrews were at this 
time as exclusive as they became afterw^ards ;" and we may 
add that we must not judge the conduct of Joseph in a case 
like this by the principles of the New Testament as now 
understood; though, putting even the lowest construction on 
Joseph's conduct in the matter, it would not be difficult to 
find many parallels to it in this age of boasted enlighten- 
ment, and this land of Bibles and churches. 

But now, leaving mere exposition, let us turn to matters 
of personal concernment. Contrary to my usual custom, I 
have to-night begun my discourse with the practical, but I 
have left one subject comparatively untouched, and that is 
the secret of Joseph's elevation. To that, therefore, let me 
turn your thoughts for a few moments now. Let me say, 
then, that the way of preferment is never permanently closed 
against any man. If one does not — as the phrase is— get 

* *< Critical and Experimental Commentary," vol. i., p. 244. 
t " Speaker's Commentary," /;/ loco. 



S8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

on in life, it is not his circumstances but himself that is to 
blame. Occasionally, indeed, there may come reverses of 
fortune for which he cannot be held responsible, but the 
man who is always out at elbows and unfortunate must have 
something amiss in himself. Either he has not fitted him- 
self to take advantage of his opportunities, or there is a leak 
somewhere in his character, through which his energies and 
abilities are drained off into useless or expensive directions. 
In the England of to-day, and especially in these United 
States, no man needs be forever a hewer of wood or a 
drawer of water ; and though sudden elevations like this of 
Joseph are not common in these days, yet there are men 
continually appearing among us who have come up from an 
obscurity as great as Joseph's to a position just as exalted 
as that which he ultimately reached. Both of our martyr- 
Presidents may be referred to as cases in point. Let young 
men, therefore, be encouraged. Do not sink into despair; 
do not imagine that the world is in league against you; 
but "learn to labor and to wait." Two things especially 
you ought to bear in mind : first, that the true way to rise to 
a higher position is to fill well the lower which you already 
occupy. To borrow here from Thomas Binney, "Remenv 
ber that to do as well as ever you can what happens to be 
the only thing within your power to do, is the best and surest 
preparation for higher service. Should things go against 
you, never give way to debilitating depression, but be hope- 
ful, brave, courageous, careful not to waste in vain and un- 
availing regret the power you will need for endurance and 
endeavor. Learn well your business, whatever it be; make 
the best of every opportunity for acquiring any sort of 
knowledge that may enlarge your acquaintance with the 
business in general, and enable you to take advantage of 
any offer or opening that may come.''"* Then, again, take 

* *' From Seventeen to Thirty," p. 86. 



Elevation at Length. 89 



:\ 



note that piety is no hinderance to the right sort of success. / 
Joseph did not hide his allegiance to God or his faith in 
God, and these even commended him to Pharaoh. So there 
are many heads of great establishments or corporations in 
the world who, though they care nothing for religion them- 
selves, would prefer that their trusted servants should be 
godly men. Sometimes, no doubt, inflexible adherence to 
the right and the true may cost a man his place, even as 
here resistance to temptation sent Joseph for a while to 
prison; but in the end I do not think that any man ever lost 
by his religion, provided his religion was the real thing, and 
not a make-believe. It may lengthen the road a little; it 
may add to the difficulties of the journey; it may take him 
through some very dark passages, but it will lead him gen- 
erally at last to honor and influence; for "godliness is prof- 
itable unto all things, having the promise of the life that 
now is and of that which is to come.'' 

But there is a success higher and better than that of out- 
ward position and wealth, and even when riches are not 
gained that is always attainable. You cannot all become 
millionaires, or merchant princes, or political leaders, or gov- 
ernors of States, or presidents of the Republic — that is an 
impossibility; but you can all be good and noble men, if 
you wull. As I have often said, good character is the true 
success of life, and " that character is the best which is real 
and thorough — true and genuine to the core — which has 
nothing underlying it of the consciousness of secret sin, 
which is as pure and unspotted as it is thought to be, and 
the moral and manly virtues of which are based upon, and 
inspired by, religious faith, by that love and fear of God 
which at once preserve from 'great transgressions' and 
prompt to the cultivation of every personal and social vir- 
tue."^ Get a character like that. To that end begin by 

■'•• Binney's *' From Seventeen to Thirty," p. 87. 



90 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

laying as its foundation-stone faith in Jesus Christ; then go- 
on, according to Peter's plan, by adding "to your faith cour- 
age, and to courage knowledge, and to knowledge temper- 
ance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, 
and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kind- 
ness love; for if ye do these things ye shall never fall, for so 
an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into 
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ." Such an entrance is life's true success, and that is 
attainable by every one of you if you choose to work for it 
in the way that the Apostle prescribes. 



VII. 

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. 
Gen. xli., 47-52 ; xlvii., 13-26. 

DURING the seven years of plenty, which began with 
the elevation of Joseph to the second position in the 
Land of Egypt, there were born to him two sons, to whom 
he gave Hebrew names, from the significance of which we 
may learn something of the deepest feelings of his heart. 
He called the eldest Manasseh, which means "forgetting;'' 
"for," said he, "God hath made me forget all my toil, and 
all my father's house." Not that he had ceased, or that he 
ever could cease, to look back with delight on the home at 
Hebron, where he had enjoyed so much of his father's af- 
fection, and had received those principles of religion and 
morality which he had so firmly held and so faithfully fol- 
lowed all through his life. Only the most slavish literalism, 
which loses sight of the real sentiment in its microscopic 
analysis of the words in which it is expressed, could bring 
any such meaning out of his languagec It partakes of the 
hyperbolical character of the saying of our Lord, "If any 
man come to me, and hate not his father and mother ... he 
cannot be my disciple 3" ^ and it has its exact parallel in 
the words of the Psalm, which represents the suitor as say- 
ing to her whom he desires to make his spouse, "Hearken, 
O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also 
thine own people, and thy father's house." f Joseph was 

* Luke xiv., 26. t Ps. xlv., 10. 



92 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

very far indeed from having lost his interest in Jacob, or 
from seeking to cut himself off from the blessings of the cov- 
enant to whose birthright he had succeeded. That is made 
very clear in the subsequent history, not only by his inqui- 
ries after his father when his brothers came to buy food, and 
by his reception of the old patriarch himself when he came to 
Egypt, but also by his dying request that when his descend- 
ants should leave that land on their return to Canaan they 
should carry thither with them his remains. What his words 
here imply, therefore, is that now, for the first time since he 
was sold to the Arabian traders, he had a home of his own, 
which was the earthly centre of his heart, and which ever at- 
tracted him back to its happiness from all his journeyings 
hither and thither in his official capacity. He was no more 
a mere unit in the vast population of a foreign land, but he 
had become the head of a household which gathered into it 
the holiest joys of his life, and the father of a son on whom 
he might lavish affection of a sort which his heart had not 
known in all his Egyptian experiences. Now, for the first 
time, he had found a home, and by that he w^as reconciled to 
his absence from his kindred. 

To his second son he gave the name Ephraim, which sig- 
nifies "fruitful;" for he said, "God hath caused me to be 
fruitful in the land of my afiliction." If anything w^ere need- 
ed to prove the correctness of the explanation which I have 
just offered of the meaning of Manasseh, it is the fact that 
here Joseph speaks of Egypt as " the land of his affliction," 
betokening that, with all its compensations, which w^ent so 
far to reconcile him to his lot in it, that country was still to 
him a land of affliction ; and that, like the patriarchs in Ca- 
naan, he was still looking for " a better country, that is, the 
heavenly." But most interesting of all it is to mark how he 
steadily recognizes the hand of God in all the circumstances 
of his life. " God h^ih. made me to forget my toil." " God 



Public Administration. 93 

hath made me fruitful." This was the faith that kept him 
from despair when he was in the pit and in the dungeon, 
and now it preserves him from pride when, as the second 
ruler in the kingdom, he is rejoicing over the little ones in 
his home. It sanctified to him his prosperity as well as his 
adversity, and allowed neither of them to hurt him. The 
triumph of the horologist is seen in the construction of that 
compensation balance which gives an equable movement to 
the chronometer, undisturbed either by the cold of the arc- 
tic regions or the heat of the torrid zone ; and the power of 
faith in God is manifested by the evenliness of disposition 
which it enables the believer to maintain alike in trouble and 
in joy. Nothing so strikes us in the character of Joseph all 
through his history as what I may call the "stable equilib- 
rium " which he invariably preserved ; and here we see the 
foundation on which it rested — in his faith in God. 

But while he is to be highly commended in that particular, 
it must, I think, be confessed that in his neglect to commu- 
nicate with his father, especially after his elevation to his 
dignity, we have what appears to be a serious fault in his 
conduct. For at least twenty-one years he allowed Jacob to 
remain in utter ignorance of his existence. Perhaps some 
excuse might be given for him while he was a slave in the 
house of Potiphar, and it was clearly impossible for him 
to convey any message to Canaan when he was a prisoner. 
But after his exaltation one would have expected that he 
would have attempted in some way to open up communica- 
tion with his father. It may be said, indeed, that in those 
days there were no such means of intercourse between dis- 
tant places as we now so fully enjoy ; but still, for one in 
Joseph's high position, we may be sure that if the will had 
been very strong, the way would very easily have been found. 
Others may suggest that the knowledge of all that had been 
done to him might only have made matters worse between 



94 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Jacob and his sons, and might have turned the brothers in 
exasperation against Benjamin ; and that because of the fear 
of these consequences, Joseph chose rather to keep silent and 
wait until God in his own way should bring about the fulfil- 
ment of the dream which promised that the father and the 
brothers together should do homage at his feet. And if any 
choose to rest in these explanations they may do so, but for 
my own part I cannot acquit Joseph here of unfilial conduct. 
To me it seems that so soon as he \vas a free man, and had 
the means at his disposal, he ought to have sent a messenger 
to tell his father that he was alive and well, and that God 
had raised him to an exalted position in the land of Egypt. 
And I cannot help pausing here for a moment to enforce 
upon young men residing in the great city and away from 
home, the duty of maintaining a regular correspondence with 
their parents. Is it not too true that there are many who 
let long intervals elapse without writing home, and whose 
letters, when they do write, are of the most unsatisfactory 
sort, containing little or nothing but excuses for not having 
written sooner, and apologies for having so little to say. 
But, as Mr. Binney says, ''the value of a letter from a young 
man in the citv to the far-off town or village home consists 
in its little details — its affectionate gossip, its account of any 
circumstance or incident that may have promise in it of ad- 
vantage, its story of hopeful struggle, of dawning success, or 
its references to new -formed friendships; to books read, 
churches attended, lectures listened to, with a thousand things 
besides, which may be small in themselves, but which show 
an interest in the home circle, and manifest the beating of 
*the child's heart within the man's.' ^'"^ You are perhaps 
so occupied day after day and week after week that you may 
have little leisure to think of those in the old homestead. In 

* " From Seventeen to Thirty," p. 89. 



Public Administration. 95 

the bustle of the workshop/or the store, or the counting-room, 
many things force themselves upon your attention, and you 
do not miss your relations. But your parents, having no 
such multiplicity of things to divert their minds, are continu- 
ally thinking about you ; and as, morning after morning, no 
letter comes from you, the effect is disappointing and depress- 
ing. They are apt to think that you have forgotten them, 
and the neglect chills their hearts. Do not, I beseech you, 
let this occur with you; and if you have been guilty of such 
thoughtlessness in the past, take the earliest opportunity of 
repairing the evil ; yea, before you sleep to-night, sit down 
and write a hearty, cheery letter to them, and tell them, if 
you like, how 3^ou came to think of doing so ; thereby you 
will warm their spirits by the assurance of your continued 
love, and benefit your own souls by the doing of a filial deed; 
for thus it is written in the royal law, " Honor thy father 
and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee." And should there be 
— who knoweth.^ I have had stranger coincidences many 
times in the course of my ministry — should there.be here 
this evening some youth w^ho has run away from home, and 
left his parents in cruel ignorance as to whether he is alive 
or dead, or, if alive, what his condition may be, let me take 
this opportunity to urge such an one, whatever the conse- 
quence may be, to send at once and let the sad ones know 
where he is, and how it is with him. Think of it ! Since 
you left, every night on which the wind has howled loud, or 
the rain has brattled noisily on the window-panes, or the snow 
has fallen thick and blinding through the darkness, these old 
people have said one to another, " Where can that poor boy 
be in such a storm t God help him T' And you, in thought- 
less indifference, are leaving them in that dark suspense 
which is always worse than the most terrible of certainties. 
Shame on you for your selfish and inconsiderate harshness 



96 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

to those whom you ought to love best in all the world ! Go 
at once and telegraph to them that you are here, that they 
may with gladdened hearts be brought to say, " This our son 
was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." 

But now, leaving Joseph's domestic history, let us examine 
his public administration. In order to get a complete view 
of that, it will be. necessary to take into consideration certain 
particulars which are detailed^ in a later section of the nar- 
rative, but it will be convenient to group them together here, 
and so to dispose of the matter once for all. As soon as he 
was appointed to his office, Joseph made a tour throughout 
the land, and had storehouses erected in all the cities. Dur- 
ing the seven years of plenty, which came according to his 
prediction, the crops were exceedingly abundant; and of 
these he either took or bought for the king a fifth part, which 
he stored in the granaries — "the food of the field, which was 
round about every city, laid he up in the same." For a time 
a strict account was kept of all that was stored in each build- 
ing, according to a fashion found illustrated quite frequently 
on the monuments ; but at length the quantity became so 
great that they gave up trying to keep a formal register. 
This went on through the 3^ears of plenty. But when those 
of scarcity began, the face of things was changed ; for the 
people, though apparently w^arned of what was coming, had 
not followed Joseph's example, and had made, of themselves, 
no preparation to meet the evil. The consequence was that 
they speedily exhausted all their available resources, and 
came to him for food. Here it is well to note that in the 
records of Egypt there is mention made of at least one 
other period of famine which lasted for seven years, and 
from the account of the sufferings which the people then en- 
dured, we may have some little idea of the terrible privations 

* Chap, xlvii., 13-26. 



Public Administration. 97 

from which Joseph's contemporaries were saved through his 
instrumentality. It occurred in the years a.d. 1064-107 i, 
and I take the following account of it from an article in 
Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible." '' Vehement drought and 
pestilence continued for seven consecutive years, so that the 
people ate corpses, and animals that died of themselves; 
the cattle perished ; a dog was sold for five deenars, and a 
eat for three deenars ; and an ardebb (about five bushels) of 
wheat for one hundred deenars, and then it failed altogether." 
The author from whom these details are taken (Es-Suyootee, 
in his Hosn el Mohadarah MS.) adds that " all the horses of 
the Khaleefeh save three perished, and gives numerous in- 
stances of the straits to which the wretched inhabitants were 
driven, and of the organized bands of kidnappers who in- 
fested Cairo, and caught passengers in the streets by ropes 
furnished with hooks and let down from the houses. This 
account is confirmed by El-Makreezee (in his Khitat), from 
which we further learn that the family and even the women 
of the Khaleefeh fled, by the way of Syria, on foot, to escape 
the peril that threatened all ranks of the population."^ So 
again, Hengstenberg, quoting from Abdollatiph, has the fol- 
lowing concerning another Egyptian famine: "In the year 
1 199 the height of the flood was small, almost without ex- 
ample. The consequence was a terrible famine, accompanied 
by indescribable enormities. Parents consumed their chil- 
dren ; human flesh was, in fact, a very common article of 
food j they contrived various ways of preparing it. They 
spoke of it, and heard it spoken of, as an indifferent affair. 
Man-eating became a regular business. The greater part of 
the population was swept away by death. In the following 
year, also, the inundation did not reach the proper height, 
and only the low lands were overflowed. Also, much of that 

* Smith's *' Dictionary of the Bible," art. Famine. 
5 



gS Joseph the Prime-minister. 

which was inundated could not be sown for want of laborers 
and seed-corn ; also of the seed which escaped this destruc- 
tion, a great part produced only meagre shoots, which per- 
ished."* These things might have been suffered in the case 
before us even to a more frightful extent, but for the policy 
that Joseph inaugurated and carried through ; and in judg- 
ing that policy, that fact ought to be taken into account. It 
is interesting also to know that the good work which he per- 
formed receives illustration, and perhaps corroboration, from 
the monuments and inscriptions. Thus, in the tombs of Beni 
Hassan, Ameni, a high officer of King Osirtasin I. of the 
twelfth dynasty, supposed to have been contemporary with 
Abraham, records this of himself: "For years I exercised 
my power as governor in the name of Mah. The hungry 
did not exist in my time even when there were years of fam- 
ine." And Brugsch tells us that on the tomb of Baba the 
following words are found : " I collected the harvest, a friend 
of the harvest god. I was watchful at the time of saving ; 
and now, when a famine arose, lasting many years, I issued 
out corn to the city at each famine." Nay, more, after hav- 
ing given some good arguments in support of his opinion, 
that eminent Egyptologist affirms that "the only just conclu- 
sion is that the many years of famine in the time of Baba 
must precisely correspond with the seven years of famine 
under Joseph's Pharaoh, one of the Shepherd kings." t 

But Joseph did not give the grain to the people for noth- 
ing. Such a practice carried on for seven years would only 
have demoralized them. So he sold it to them first for their 
money; then, when that was exhausted, for their cattle; then, 
when their cattle had been all transferred into the royal 
hands, he, at their own suggestion, and in accordance with 
their own urgent request, bought their lands. Thus, from 

* Quoted in "Joseph and his Times," by Thornley Smith, pp. io6, 107. 
t Brugsch's "True Story of the Exodus of Israel, etc.," pp. 131, 132. 



Public Administration. 99 

being peasant proprietors of the soil they became tenants in 
fee to the government, and bound themselves to pay as a 
rental the fifth part of the increase of their fields year by 
year continually. It is even said that he bought the people 
as well as their lands; but that does not mean that they be- 
came slaves, for there is not a word concerning enforced 
labor, and the sole change was that the government became 
the owner of the soil, and the people the tenants, with this 
exception, that in the case of the priests, for whom a royal 
provision had been already made, there was no interference 
with their lands, and no exaction required from them. At 
the same time that this alteration was made in the tenure 
of the land, the people, perhaps at first for reasons of simple 
convenience, that they might be the more easily supplied 
from the granaries, were brought into the cities, but after- 
wards, probably from motives of state policy, and with a view 
to the securing of greater centralization, they were kept in 
their city homes, and that, so far as appears, was the sole per- 
manent interference with their personal liberty. Now, here 
again it is remarkable that the statements of the sacred nar- 
rative are confirmed by those of secular historians. Thus 
Herodotus says that Sesostris divided the soil among the 
inhabitants, assigning square plots of land of equal size to 
all, and obtained his revenue from a rent paid annually by 
the holders. Strabo affirms that the occupiers of land held 
it subject to a rent; and Diodorus represents the land as 
possessed only by the priests, the king, and the warriors. 
There is in Genesis no mention of the army, the arrange- 
ment for them having been probably entered into at a date 
subsequent to the time of Joseph, but in regard to the other 
points there is entire harmony between the sacred and secu- 
lar historians.^ As to the state of things existing until very 

* See " Speaker's Commentaiy," in loco. 



loo Joseph the Prime-minister. 

recent times in Egypt, the late Dr. Edward Robinson, of this 
city, gives the result of his observation in the early part of 
1838, in a passage from which I quote the following sen- 
tences, that I may point the contrast between the policy of 
Joseph and that of Mohammed Ali. He says, " By a single 
decree the pasha declared himself to be the sole owner of 
all the lands in Egypt, and the people of course became his 
tenants-at-will, or rather his slaves. It is interesting to com- 
pare this proceeding with a similar event in the ancient his- 
tory of Egypt under the Pharaohs. At the entreaty of the 
people themselves, Joseph bought them and their land for 
Pharaoh, so that ^the land became Pharaoh's;' but he gave 
them bread in return to sustain them and their families in 
time of famine. ' Only the land of the priests bought he 
not ;' but the modern Pharaoh made no exception, and 
stripped the mosques and other religious and charitable in- 
stitutions of their landed endowments as mercilessly as the 
rest. Joseph also gave the people seed to sow, and re- 
quired for the king only a fifth of the produce, leaving four- 
fifths to them as their own property; but now, though seed 
is in like manner given out, yet every village is compelled to 
cultivate two-thirds of its lands with cotton and other arti- 
cles solely for the pasha, and also to render back to him, in 
the form of taxes and exactions in kind, a large proportion 
of the produce of the remaining third." ^ The end of such 
a state of matters could only be a collapse like that which 
this generation has seen, and what may be the outcome of 
the present anomalous strife we may not foretell. This only 
we can say, things may be better, but they could hardly be 
worse. The result, then, of Joseph's prudence was, that the 
people were saved from such terrible decimation as would 
inevitably have been caused by famine, but that their lands 

* '' Biblical Researches," vol. i., p. 29. 



Public Administration. ioi 

were transferred to the ownership of the government, and 
held by them as tenants subject to an annual rental of one- 
fifth part of the increase. 

But now the inquiry suggests itself whether such a policy 
was not oppressive and injurious, and on both sides of that 
question much has been written, with great ability, by differ- 
ent authors. In such a discussion, however, certain very im- 
portant things have to be borne in mind. In the first place, 
the believer in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is not 
bound to vindicate the policy of Joseph in every particular. 
The fact that a thing is recorded in the Bible does not com- 
mit the author of the Scriptures to its approval. Many things 
are narrated, even regarding the servants of God, that are 
not endorsed. We need not specify examples, for they are 
so numerous that pertinent illustrations will readily suggest 
themselves to your remembrance ; but the existence of such 
cases elsewhere relieves us from all anxiety as to the conclu- 
sion which may be arrived at regarding Joseph's administra- 
tion here. It may be a matter of curious history, but even 
if it were proved to be unjust no good argument could be 
drawn against the Bible because of that. 

In the second place, it would be manifestly unfair to judge 
Joseph's policy by the principles of modern political econo- 
my or by those of New Testament enforcement and obliga- 
tion. We must put him in the environment of his age, and 
we have no right to expect from him conformity to a stan- 
dard which was not at that time in existence. 

In the third place, the policy itself was approved by those 
who had the best means of judging of its character, and who, 
as being directly and immediately concerned, would have felt 
its hardships, if there had been any in the case. But, so far 
from regarding him as an oppressor, the people hailed him as 
a benefactor, and said to him, " Thou hast saved our lives." 

In the fourth place, it must not be forgotten that Egypt is 



•102 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

an exceptional country, and that, from the constant depend- 
ence of the people on the irrigation of their fields, and the 
continual changes made in the surface of the country by the 
annual inundation of the river, in the way of obliterating 
landmarks, and removing part of the soil from the one side 
of the Nile to the other, the holding of all the lands by the 
crown would have special public advantages which could 
not well be either enjoyed or appreciated by the inhabitants 
of other territories. In conversation upon this subject the 
other day with the venerable author of " The Land and the 
Book," I discovered that he was inclined to find the expla- 
nation of Joseph's settlement with the people for their lands 
in the unusual character of the country itself; and from what 
he then said I gathered that he would fully agree with Bishop 
Browne, when, in the " Speaker's Commentary " he alleges, 
"The peculiar nature of the land, its dependence on the 
overflow of the Nile, and the unthrifty habits of the cultiva- 
tors, made it desirable to establish a system of centralization, 
perhaps to introduce some general principle of irrigation, in 
modern phraseology, to promote the prosperity of the coun- 
try by great government works, in preference to leaving all 
to the uncertainty of individual enterprise. If this were so, 
then the saying * Thou hast saved our lives' was no language 
of Eastern adulation, but the verdict of a grateful people.'' 

For the rest, this policy of Joseph's did not create a 
scarcity for the advantage either of himself or of the mon- 
arch, but it provided the means of meeting a scarcity; it 
did not withhold corn, and so earn the curse of the peopl-e, 
but it frankly brought it out as it was required, and sold it 
at a price that was mutually agreed upon ; it did not insist on 
everything in the bond, no matter what hardship might be 
thereby occasioned, for, so far as appears, Joseph not only 
gave the people seed for their fields, but also gave them back 
their oattle, which he had meanwhile preserved to them ; 



Public Administration. 103 

above all, it neither bought what was not in existence, nor 
sold what was not in actual possession, and so it had in it 
nothing which makes it in any respect a parallel case to those 
speculative combinations among ourselves with which some 
have sought to classify it True, it left the government own- 
ers of the land, but, as we have seen, that was the most con- 
venient settlement both for the carrying out of systematic 
works for the prevention of similar national calamities in the 
future, and for the stoppage of all litigation over matters of 
boundary ; and one-fiflh part of the produce, considering the 
fertility of the soil, was not an exorbitant rental, especially 
if it included all government imposts of every sort. Indeed, 
that was the proportion required of the Israelites by law at 
a later date in Canaan, for they had to give one tithe to the 
Levites, and another to the sacrificial feasts, and when they 
were foolish enough to set up a king, they had to give still a 
third tithe to him, but they never until after Solomon's day 
complained of hardship on that score; therefore, all things 
considered, the arrangement made by Joseph with the Egyp- 
tians cannot be called either unjust, oppressive, or in any 
way unstatesmanlike ; and in the Old World I have known 
many farmers who would have desired nothing better than a 
long lease on such terms as he granted the land to the peo- 
ple with whom he had to do. 

I have left myself but little time for any practical applica- 
tion of the principles illustrated in this interesting history. 
But I must linger long enough to make at least two remarks. 
Let us see, in the first place, how much we have to be thank- 
ful for, in that for so many years we have enjoyed the bless- 
ing of seed-time and harvest, and have been preserved from 
perils whether by fire or flood. These things are in the 
providence of God. Some will tell us, indeed, that it is all 
a matter of law, and that, if we will only conform to the re- 
quirements or conditions in each case, we shall always have 



104 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

similar protection from the ravages of famine or of flood ; 
but they who reason in that way fail to take note of the fact 
that there is always a region of uncertainty beyond the range 
of human foresight, which God keeps entirely in his own 
hand, and out of which there may come at any moment some 
agency that may upset all our calculations, and derange all 
our plans ; and that, after all, because of that, God is still 
supreme. Nay, more, as we saw in a former discourse, the 
providence of God is over human actions as well as over 
physical laws ; and so, look at it in any way we may, we 
must still come to the conclusion that Jehovah has been the 
author of our blessings. How important a good harvest over 
all our country is to every branch of trade and commerce in 
the land ! and yet how seldom we, especially we in the cities, 
think of recognizing God's hand in it ! To be sure we have 
our annual Thanksgiving-day, but that is rapidly losing its 
religious significance and becoming a mere day of pleasure 
among us ; and it is only when some plague of grasshoppers 
or some long-continued drought is over some large section 
of the West, that we have the matter forced upon our atten- 
tion. But have you thought of this, that it was a series of 
good harvests that brought up our paper money to par value 
with gold } and if we were to have a succession of bad ones, 
which may God prevent, who knows to what straits we might 
be again reduced ; and what confusion might be caused in 
our financial system — if system that can be called which goes 
on blindly in a course that must end in catastrophe — if some 
new Joseph among our statesmen does not arise to prevent 
it? Then as to local matters in the city; if we exclude our 
municipal government, which is about as bad as it is possible 
to conceive a government to be, how much we have in other 
respects to be thankful for? During the last twelve or thir- 
teen years^ we have seen other cities desolated by fire ; and 

* This was written in March, 1884. 



Public Administration. 105 

now for two consecutive years we have had to read sad ac- 
counts of the cities in the valley of the Ohio which have 
been visited with fearful inundation. But we here have 
been spared from all such things ; we ought, therefore, to 
thank God for our preservation, and our thanksgiving ought 
to take the form of a thank-offering for the relief of those 
who are overwhelmed by the calamity which I have men- 
tioned last. When one member of the body suffers, all the 
others suffer with it, and our sympathy should take the prac- 
tical form of rendering all needed assistance. Glad am I to 
know that this has been so largely the case, and that such 
prompt responses were sent from our exchanges to the cries 
for help. "With such sacrifices God is well pleased;" and 
at this particular time it is well to remember that the fast 
which God has chosen "is to loose the bands of wickedness, 
to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free ; 
to break every yoke, to deal bread to the hungry, to bring 
the poor that are cast out to thy house, and to cover the 
naked." That is practical gratitude to God shown by kind- 
ness to our fellow -men, and that is the sort of Lent and 
Thanksgiving we should keep all the round year, for the 
goodness of God in preserving us here from fire and flood 
and famine. 

But, finally, we see how important it is to husband our re- 
sources in prosperity against the time of adversity. Joseph 
kept the surplus of the years of plenty and made it useful 
both to Pharaoh and his people in the years of famine; and 
if the Egyptians generally had believed his warning and fol- 
lowed his example, they might not, indeed we may say with 
all confidence they would not, have been reduced to such 
straits as they were before the famine ended. Now we ought 
to learn for ourselves to lay up in store against the time to 
come. I know that the Saviour says we are to " take no 
thought for the morrow," but he means that we should not 

5* 



io6 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

worry about to-morrow. He never designed to rebuke pru- 
dence ; and, indeed, if there were more true prudence about 
the future with many, there would be less cause for anxiety 
in regard to it in their hearts. To be prudent or provident, 
therefore, in saving from our surplus in time of plenty to meet 
a possible scarcity, is one of the best ways of obeying the 
Lord's command, *' Be not anxious for the morrow." Of 
course I admit that the passion for hoarding is one of the 
most contemptible that can take possession of a human 
heart; but I am not advocating hoarding. For of his surplus 
the wise man will give a goodly proportion to God and his 
cause and to public charities, but he will be careful, also, to 
lay past a little for any contingency of sickness or loss, or 
whatever else. He who lives quite up to his income when 
that is at the largest, must suffer when, for any reason, it is 
lessened or entirely stopped. It is wise, therefore, always to 
live within one's means, so as to provide for what is popular- 
ly called " a rainy day.'' And when any exceptional prosperi- 
ty comes w^e ought not to use that all up at once, but should 
store some of it, as Joseph did a portion of the harvests in 
the years of plenty. There is an old Scotch saying concern- 
ing those who, when a windfall comes, consume all the pro- 
ceeds of it right off, and are reduced again straightway to 
poverty, that ^'it is either a hunger or a burst with them." 
And there are many among working-men, and young men 
beginning life, of whom I fear that is the truth. When they 
have it they make it go, and when they haven't it they have 
nothing. But God has no blessing for such improvidence. 
Look you ahead! and that you may meet the future better, 
save a litde in the present. 

And surely you will forgive me if, as I conclude, I beseech 
you in your outlook to take in eternity as well as time, and 
urge you to make some provision for that. Remember you 
have to pass away from earth ; how important, therefore, it 



Public Administration. 107 

is, while you are on earth, to send something on before you ! 
"Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven," and seek to 
have there in store the true riches ; or, as Paul has phrased 
it, "Do good, be rich in good works, ready to distribute, will- 
ing to communicate ; laying up in store for yourselves a good 
foundation against the time to come, that ye may lay hold 
on eternal life." And as the beginning and root of all that, 
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and build your life after his 
principles. You remember the story of the good old court- 
jester and his dying master. After some more than usually 
ridiculous outburst of his humor, the king had given him a 
beautiful staff, telling him to keep it until he found a greater 
fool than himself, and then to hand it to him. For years he 
carried the staff wherever he went, until it came to be re- 
garded as his badge of office. But now the king was dying, 
and his affectionate old servant went in to visit him. The 
monarch said, "I am going a long journey ;" whereupon the 
jester asked, "Has your majesty made any provision for the 
way?" to which the king replied, "No." "Does your maj- 
esty^know where you are going? or have you made any ar- 
rangements for your reception at your destination ?" " No," 
was still the answer. "Then," said the faithful old man, 
with tears in his eyes and his voice quivering with emotion, 
" take back this staff, for in you I have found a greater fool 
than myself, since I have cared for all these things in refer- 
ence to my own departure." It is a simple story, and car- 
ries its own application — let not the force of it be lost on 
any one of us. 



VIII. 

THE BROTHERS' FIRST VISIT TO EGYPT. 
Gen. xlii., 1-38. 

THE famine which pressed so sorely upon Egypt seems 
to have extended to some of the neighboring countries. 
But though in the land of the Pharaohs its proximate cause 
was the failure of the Nile to rise to its accustomed height 
in its time of flood, we need not be surprised to find that it 
was felt in some surrounding districts which were not direct- 
ly irrigated by the water of that river. For, as we saw in a 
former lecture, the annual inujidations of the Nile are due 
to the swelling of its volume by the heavy summer rains 
among the mountains of Abyssinia, which wash down the 
rich lands of that region by the Blue Nile and the Atbara. 
Now, as these rains themselves are mainly the result of evap- 
oration from the Mediterranean, the failure of that would 
equally affect the territories of Nubia, Arabia, and Canaan, 
which depend on the same thing for their water supply. And 
Dr. Kitto, in the " Pictorial Bible," tells us that " there are 
not wanting historical instances of years of dearth which were 
common to Egypt with the adjoining countries. Thus the 
historian Makrisi describes a famine which took place in 
Egypt on account of a deficiency in the increase of the Nile, 
in the year of the Hejira 444, which at the same time ex- 
tended over Syria, and even to Bagdad.''* A similar state 
of things existed in the case before us, and so the sufferers 

* Quoted in "Joseph and his Times," by Thornley Smith, p. 115. 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 109 

flocked to Egypt, that they might obtain relief by purchasing 
some of the stores which had been laid up there through 
the forethought of Joseph. 

From some of these -parties who had returned with their 
supplies to Canaan, Jacob, who had begun to feel the press- 
ure of the general calamity, heard that there was " corn in 
Egypt," and, as the result of a family consultation, he sent 
his ten sons to that land, that they might obtain the food for 
the lack of which they were languishing — his ten sons, for he 
would not trust Benjamin to the care of the others. Not 
that Benjamin w^is still a child, for he must now have been 
between twenty and thirty years of age; but he was the son 
of his beloved Rachel, and since the disappearance, or, as 
Jacob had been led to believe, the death of Joseph, he had 
succeeded to the favored place in his father's affections. He 
feared, therefore, lest some mischief should befall him, and 
so he determined to keep him by his side. Perhaps there 
had been through all these years a lingering suspicion in his 
mind that Joseph had met with some foul play at the hands 
of his brothers, and he did not choose to put Benjamin simi- 
larly in their power ; or perhaps it was only the weak but 
pardonable partiality of a somewhat broken-hearted old man 
who had seen sore sorrow, and who clung to the presence of 
his youngest son because of the associations with " the days 
which were no more " that were so largely centred in him. 
But in any case he would not let Benjamin go. So the ten / 
brothers set out from Hebron without him, and in due sea- 
son arrived in Egypt, where they were ushered into the pres- 
ence of the lord of the country. For though Joseph did not 
himself attend to the supply of the people of Egypt, it would 
appear that all applicants from other lands had to be sub- 
jected to his personal cross-examination. This is to be ac- 
counted for by the extreme jealousy which the Egyptians had 
of all foreigners, and which would naturally be stronger than 



no Joseph the Prime-minister. 

usual at a time when all the energies of the nation were 
strained to the uttermost to meet the evil which was then 
upon the people. 

When Joseph saw the ten brothers he knew them in a 
moment, but they did not recognize him. That was perfect- 
ly natural, for when he was sold by them to the Ishmaelites 
they had all attained to the maturity of manhood, and the 
twenty years or so which had intervened would not have 
made much change on them, since from thirty-five to fifty or 
fifty-five the alteration in a person's appearance is not so 
great as that which occurs in the same interval, either before 
or after these two limits. Besides, the ten were together, 
dressed in the same fashion as of yore, and speaking the old 
mother-tongue. But he had broadened out from the youth 
of seventeen to the man of eight-and-thirty, was shaven after 
the manner of the Egyptians, and was arrayed most likely in 
some official robe, while he spoke to them through the me- 
dium of an interpreter. 

As they entered into his presence "they bowed them- 
selves before him with their faces to the earth;" and we can 
more easily imagine than describe the thrill that tingled 
through his frame as now at length, in this marvellous man- 
ner, he saw the fulfilment of his early dream. How near h^ 
must have felt God to be in that supreme moment ! and yet 
to the on-looker how commonplace the whole scene appear- 
ed ! How unconscious, too, at the time, these ten men were 
that they were doing anything to verify their brother's dreams ! 
and what a commentary it all was on their mocking and ma- 
licious words of long ago — " Behold ! this dreamer cometh. 
Come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into 
a pit, and we will say an evil beast hath devoured him; and 
we shall see what will become of his dreams !" And they did 
see, but the sight was very different from that which they 
had planned to make it. *^ Man proposes, but God disposes.'' 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. hi 

He is always as near to us as he was to Joseph at this long- 
anticipated moment, and the commonplace, if we had but 
the eyes to see, is as bright with his presence as is the un- 
usual or the marvellous; while, through our own free agency, 
we are all the time unconsciously working out his purposes; 
for, as Isaac Taylor suggestively remarks, "This is the very 
miracle of Providence, that no miracles are needed for the 
carrying out of its designs/' Every actor in this life-drama 
is seen working according to his own character, and acting 
according to his own unfettered will. No violence is done 
to the free agency of any one of them, and yet, in some in- 
scrutable way, they all carry forward one great purpose, and 
the word of God is fulfilled. Thus God was in and over this 
history from first to last. But in that it was not in the least 
degree exceptional, for he is as really in each of our lives, 
and we shall miss the great moral of the story if we do not 
come to a clear recognition of that fact. 

But now let us look for a little at Joseph's treatment of 
his brethren. As we have seen, he had them at a great dis- 
advantage, for he knew them, but they did not know him, 
and he determined to avail himself of that for the testing of 
their characters. He had not yet formed any definite pur- 
pose as to his future disposal of them; there was, so far as 
appears, no idea in his mind at this time of bringing them 
all to reside permanently in Egypt; he simply wanted to find 
out what sort of men they now wxre, and whether they had 
anything like regret or repentance for their cruel treatment 
of himself For this purpose he determined to preserve his 
incognito a little longer, and to act a part before them, or to- 
wards them, which might bring their sin to remembrance. 
You may remember how the great dramatist represents 
Hamlet as seeking " to catch the conscience of the king " 
by engaging the players to act in the royal presence a trag- 
edy which should portray a murder, while he determined to 



112 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

watch the effect on his uncle. Now, much in the same way 
here Joseph decided to be himself an actor, and to treat his 
brothers not according to his real nature, but in such a way 
as would particularly remind them of their conduct towards 
himself. Then, from the result he would form his opinion 
of their characters, and decide what he should do with them. 

Some may think that he was blameworthy in all this, but 
so far as the mere representation of himself as being other 
than he really was is concerned, I cannot think of con- 
demning him; for there was no malice in his heart, and his 
purpose was of the highest sort; nor can I forget that the 
Lord himself did something of the same kind in his inter- 
view with the Syro-Phoenician woman. I cannot find great 
fault with Joseph, therefore, for seeking on this occasion to 
act a part which was not really natural to him, and if in one 
or two points he rather overdid it, we must not set that down 
to harshness, or anything like revenge, but rather to his in- 
experience as a hypocrite; for the transparentness of his dis- 
position made it difficult for him to wear a disguise, and the 
very tenderness of his heart, strange as it may appear, con- 
tributed to the vehemence of his speech, for he had to make 
his manner rougher and his words coarser, just that he might 
be the better able to choke back his tears. 

They had justified their cruelty to him by alleging that he 
had been a spy on their conduct, and had reported their evil 
deeds to their father; and so now, after asking whence they 
were, and receiving for answer that they had come from the 
land of Canaan to buy food, he most abruptly and sternly 
accused them of having come to Egypt on a hostile mission, 
to spy out the defenceless character of the country on its 
north-eastern boundary, and to carry back such a report as 
might tempt the Canaanites to make an invasion at the time 
when the people were suffering such privation from famine. 
But they indignantly and honestly repelled the charge, say- 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 113 

ing, " We are all one man's sons ; we are true men ; thy serv- 
ants are no spies." This was a good and sufficient answer, 
for it showed that their mission was one of family necessity, 
and not of national ambition. But he reiterated his accusa- 
tion, and they replied with more explicitness, "Thy servants 
are twelve brethren, the sons of one man in the land of Ca- 
naan ; and, behold, the youngest is this day with our father, 
and one is not." Ah ! what subtle suggestiveness is in these 
words, and how must they have gone to the very depths of 
Joseph's heart long before the interpreter had finished turn- 
ing them into the language of Egypt! ^^ One is not." So 
they thought him dead; and the very idea must have made 
"a lump in his throat." But stay! what have we here? 
"Thy servants are twelve brethren, but one is not." Is not 
that the very thought with which Wordsworth has made us 
all so familiar in his little ballad, " We are Seven ?" Was it, 
therefore, that in the Hebron home they still thought the 
family unbroken, though they had given him up for dead? 
Could it be possible, in spite of all that had come and gone, 
that he had such a place in their thoughts and in their hearts ? 
Then, "the youngest is this day with our father;" and so 
Jacob was yet alive, and Benjamin was at home with him. 
The news made a flutter at his heart, and in that way we 
explain the broken, hurried impatience of his rejoinder, and 
the assumed and exaggerated emphasis of his words, which 
he had to help out with an Egyptian asseveration, not once 
only but twice, making a show of force, as many a general 
has done, simply to hide his weakness. " That is it that I 
spake unto you, saying, ye are spies : hereby ye shall be 
proved. By the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, 
except your youngest brother come hither. Send one of you, 
and let him fetch your brother, and ye shall be kept in prison, 
that your words may be proved, whether there be any truth 
in you : or else by the life of Pharaoh surely ye are spies." 



114 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

And so he abruptly closed the interview by ordering them 
to be put all together into prison until they should accede to 
his terms. 

They had put him into a pit, and now he put them into 
prison, and awaited the result. He allowed them to be thus 
shut up by themselves for three days, and then summoning 
them to his presence once more, he relented so far as to re- 
verse his former proposal, and gave as the reason for his 
change of plan the fact that he feared God. This must have 
seemed a little strange to them, especially as he appeared to 
recognize their religious belief, and to place himself in the 
same category with them in that matter ; but the terms which 
he now offered were so much better than those which he had 
at first laid down, that they lost sight of everything else for 
the moment, in their eagerness to accept his new proposal. 
Instead of insisting on sending only one of them to Canaan, 
and keeping the other nine as hostages for his return with 
Benjamin, he is willing now to let nine go and carry corn for 
the famine of their houses, while he kept one of them bound 
in prison as a pledge for their coming again with their young- 
est brother ! It was hard enough still, but it was better than 
before, and making a virtue of necessity they agreed to do 
as he had said. 

But which of them should be thus retained as a hostage 
for the rest? That was now the distressing question ; and it 
was while they were still in suspense concerning it that they 
began to say one to another, " We are verily guilty concern- 
ing our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when 
he besought us, and we would not hear ; therefore is this dis- 
tress come upon us." Now, when they are each facing lia- 
bility to that isolation and loss of liberty to which they had 
consigned Joseph, their sin against him is brought to their 
remembrance, and by a simultaneous impulse they begin to 
speak to each other of their guilt. They had shown no mer- 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 115 

cy to him, and they need not be surprised, therefore, if now 
no consideration should be had for them. But there was 
one exception to this chorus of confession, for Reuben had 
tried honestly, though perhaps not as watchfully and persist- 
ently as he might, to save Joseph from his brothers' rage ; 
and so, while vindicating himself, he only put another thorn 
into the consciences of the rest when he said, " Spake I not 
unto you, saying, do not sin against the child ; and ye would 
not hear ? therefore, behold, also his blood is required." 
All this conversation was carried on by them in a sort of 
"aside" and in the presence of Joseph, without the least 
suspicion on their part that he understood every word they 
said. The effect on him was so great that he could not re- 
strain his tears, and went away for a little to conceal his 
emotion; for it was not time yet to declare himself unto them, 
since he wanted still to see how they treated Benjamin, and 
to that end it was needful that he should maintain for some 
time longer the character which he had assumed. So he 
took Simeon, perhaps because he knew the harshness of his 
disposition as manifested at Shechem, or, possibly, because 
Simeon might have been the ringleader of the brothers in 
their persecution of himself, and after binding him before 
their eyes, gave orders that he should be taken to prison. 
Then, commanding the servants in the granaries to give the 
rest all the corn they desired, together with smaller haver- 
sacks filled with provisions for the way, and to restore every 
man's money into his sack, he sent them back to Hebron. 

On their arrival at their first resting-place for the night, 
one of them having occasion to open his sack of corn — not 
his travelling sack, but the larger bag which had not been 
designed to be disturbed until he reached home — found his 
money returned, and this discovery added greatly to their 
dismay. They feared that they were the victims of some 
conspiracy, and could not contemplate going back to Egypt 



ii6 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

without trepidation ; but one good symptom in them was 
that now they began to think of the overruling Providence 
which before they had so greatly slighted ; for they said, 
" What is this that God hath done unto us ?" 

On their arrival at Hebron, where perhaps they had been 
eagerly expected, not only because of the pressure of the 
famine, but also because of the delay in their return, they 
told their father all that had occurred between them and the 
lord — or Adon — of the land and how they had been com- 
pelled to leave Simeon behind them, with the assurance that 
his liberty could be secured only by their taking Benjamin 
with them when next they went for food. This was heavy 
news for Jacob ; and when, on opening up their sacks, each 
one found that it was with him as with the brother at their 
first halting-place, and every man's bundle of money was re- 
stored, they were all alarmed. Joseph had meant it in kind- 
ness, but the sternness of his manner made his very kind- 
ness be suspected, and they thought it only some new trap 
for their ensnaring. It was on Jacob, however, that the blow 
fell with most severity, and he could think of nothing but his 
sons. So he sent forth this wail of sadness — " Me have ye 
bereaved of my children : Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and 
ye will take Benjamin away : all these things are against 
me." It was a bitter cry, not to be stayed by Reuben's im- 
pulsive w^ords of promise to bring Benjamin back. Poor 
Jacob ! how he would smile in after-years at this unneces- 
sary anxiety ! But it was very real to him then; and as he 
thought of his long-lost Joseph and the missing Simeon, we 
cannot wonder that he should say, with something of pas- 
sionate vehemence concerning Benjamin, "My son shall not 
go down with you ; for his brother is dead, and he is left 
alone : if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye ge, 
then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the 
grave.'' What a mixed condition of affairs we often find on 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 117 

earth, and how many tears are shed that would never have 
wet our cheeks if we had known the true state of the case ! 
Yet they are not useless tears because of that. Joseph weeps 
at the discovery of his brethren's penitence, and his heart is 
relieved by the vent thus given to his emotion; for it is more 
dangerous to restrain tears of joy than those of sorrow. Ja- 
cob weeps over the occurrence of an event which never hap- 
pened, and the anticipation of an evil that never came; yet 
the sorrow in the end was salutary, for, like the shrinking 
of his limb at Peniel beneath the angel's touch, it threw his 
entire weight upon God, and he was upborne in the ever- 
lasting arms. 

But now, leaving the deeply interesting narrative, and con- 
centrating our attention for a little on this lamentation of 
Jacob, let us see what we may learn for ourselves from its 
consideration. 

It was very natural for the patriarch to speak in this way; 
and though we may not vindicate him for murmuring, we un- 
derstand his state of heart too well to think of upbraiding 
him for giving way so far to the bitterness of his grief. " He 
that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at 
him." I cannot. My heart is too full of pity for him, and 
I have too often been just like him, so I dare not chide his 
tears. But one thing surprises me in his ejaculation, and 
that is that he makes no mention of God. He speaks to his 
sons as if they had done it all, but he makes no reference 
to Him who said to him, on the memorable night at Bethel, ; 
"I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither / 
thou goest." For the moment he has forgotten how the 
Lord had led him at first to Laban's house, and had given 
him prosperity during his twenty-one years' sojourn in Pa- 
dan-aram ; how he had cared for him when he left his father- 
in-law; how he had mollified for him the anger of Esau; 
how he had blessed him at Peniel after the night-long wres- 



ii8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

tie; and how he had protected him at the time when the 
violence of some of his sons might have drawn upon him 
the vengeance of the Shechemites. Now God was in this 
new trial as much and as really as he was in these old ones, 
and if Jacob had remembered that, he would not have spoken 
as he did. We shall see, indeed, that after a while, when 
his sons were bidding him farewell on their departure for 
Egypt for more food, he came back to his old trustfulness, 
and offered for them this prayer: "God Almighty give you 
mercy before the man, that he may send away your other 
brother, and Benjamin. If I be bereaved of my children, I 
am bereaved.'^ But at the first, when the full shadow of his 
trouble passed over him, God was to him, for the moment, 
eclipsed, and that only made his trial heavier. 

Then, besides being thus practically atheistic, this declara- 
tion of Jacob was ultimately found to be untrue. All these 
things were not against him. They were really working to- 
gether for his good. They were onward steps in that process 
by which he was to recover his long-lost son, and was to 
have conferred upon him those years of happiness that, as 
we read the history, seem to us to be like the Sabbath of his 
earthly life, which, after the labor and sorrow of the week, he 
was enabled to spend in rest, in thankfulness, and in joy. 
How he would blame himself for these hasty words in those 
latter days, when he went to see Joseph in his palace, and 
took his grandsons between his knees; and I can imagine 
him saying to the God of his fathers, after all the riddle of 
his life had been unfolded to him, *' Now I know the thoughts 
of thy heart towards me, and I bless thee that they were 
thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give me this delight- 
ful end.^^ 

Now, from this analysis of Jacob's experience, we may 
learn, in the first place, that God is in all the events of our 
lives. Many of us are ready enough to admit that he is in 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 119 

the prosperous things, but when trouble comes upon us we 
attribute that solely to others, and in that way we lose the 
comfort which otherwise we might have enjoyed under its 
endurance. The mercies of a lifetime are often ignored by 
us under the bitterness of a single trial; and God, who has 
been our friend for years, is forgotten altogether, while we pas- 
sionately condemn some others as the authors of our afflic- 
tion. But we shall never find consolation that way. The 
first thing we ought to say regarding every trial is, " It is the 
Lord." No matter what may have been the human instru- 
mentality through which we may think our trouble has come 
upon us ; no matter what may have been the material causes 
which have apparently operated against us — in and over all 
human actions and all material operations there is God. His 
providence is universal and supreme, and the first thought 
of our spirits should be, " It is the Lord.'' Then that will 
steady us ; for did he not give his own Son to death for us 
on the cross ? Has he not shown his kindness to us in mul- 
titudinous and unmistakable ways throughout our lives } Can 
it be, therefore, that he means anything but good to us in 
anything, even though it should be a terrible affliction.'* Thus, 
so soon as we trace a trial up to God, we are on the way to 
comfort and support under it. For there are not two Gods 
— one of providence, and one of redemption. Jehovah is 
one, and he who " so loved the world that he gave his only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life," is at the same time he 
who orders our lives and sends and superintends our afflic- 
tion. We may, therefore, have absolute faith in his good- 
ness, not only m spite of trial, but through trial. You re- / 
member how, after Manoah's sacrifice, when, as the angel of 
the Lord did wondrously, the conviction forced itself upon 
him that it was the Lord himself, and he said to his wife, 
" We shall surely die, because we have seen the Lord," she 



/ 



120 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

reassured him with these words : " If the Lord were pleased 
to kill us he would not have received a burnt-offering at our 
hands, neither would he have shown us all these things; nor 
would he, as at this time, have told us such things as these.''* 
Now, the argument I raise from the cross of Christ here is 
^ similar to that. If God had wished our destruction, or any 
absolute evil to befall us, he needed not have sent his Son 
to make atonement for our sins. But the very fact that he 
has done that proves that he desires our highest w^elfare, 
and will make all things subservient to our everlasting good. 
Therefore, if we would not fall into despair under our trials, 
let us recognize God's hand in them, and let us think of 
him as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The 
cross of Christ is thus the healing tree which, cast into the 
bitter waters of our trials, makes them sweet and whole- 
some. If, instead of turning on his sons, Jacob had only 
turned to /iis God, he would have been sustained; and we 
may be sure of this, that trouble never yet overwhelmed a 
man so long as he could see God in it. 

Then, again, from our analysis of Jacob's case, we ought 
to learn to pass no sentence of condemnation on God's work 
until it is completed. '' Judge nothing before the time." We 
must not argue, from the pain of a part of the process, that 
there is evil intended to us in the result of the whole. The 
surgeon has a stern aspect, and apparently an unfeeling 
hand, when he cuts into the diseased organ or amputates the 
broken limb, but he is working towards healing all the time. 
And so it is with God and the discipline of his children. 
Wait until he finish his work before you condemn it. Wait 
until he finish his work, and when you can see the end from 
the beginning, as he has done all along, when you can look 
back upon the beginning from the end, and see his plan as 

* Judges xiii., 22, 23. 



The Brothers' First Visit to Egypt. 121 

a whole, you will not need that any one should vindicate his 
ways to you. 

Finally, if these two things be true, that God is in our 
trials, and that the outcome of them all under his supervision 
will be good, we may surely stay ourselves in trouble by 
earnest prayer. " Is any among you afflicted, let him pray." 
We have to deal with no blind, remorseless law. The Lord 
Jesus has taught us to say " Our Faiher,^^ and when we 
enter fully into the meaning of these words, and recognize 
clearly that his providence is universal, we shall have no 
difficulty in saying ^' thy will be done;'' for the father's will 
is always love to his own children. That will sustain us 
while we are on earth. Then when we have passed from 
earth to heaven, and look back from the side of the throne 
above on all the way by which we were led here below, we 
shall feel much as Jacob must have felt in Egypt when he 
reviewed the incidents in his career, but only more intensely, 
and we shall be constrained to say, not " all these things 
were against me," but rather, " Now I know that all things 
wrought together for my good. My light afflictions, which 
were but for a moment, have wrought out for me a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 

6 



IX. 

THE SECOND VISIT OF THE BROTHERS TO EGYPT 

Gen. xliii.-xlv., 15. 

AS the story advances towards its climax of interest in 
Joseph's revelation of himself to his brethren, it grows 
in simplicity and pathos, so that one fears to touch it, lest 
he should mar its beauty by any attempt at paraphrase. It 
is, withal, so perfectly familiar to every reader of the Script- 
ures that little more is needed on our part than to mark the 
several steps in its ascent to that family reunion in which it 
culminates, and to account for which it has been introduced 
into the sacred narrative. Canaan was not yet ripe for the 
inheritance of the tribes, and the tribes had not yet that im- 
portance in numbers and resources which was needed for 
their entering upon its possession. They required time and 
opportunity for growth, and even after that they had to be 
put into the fire of trial, that they might be fused into a na- 
tion. For these purposes it was necessary that they should 
go down into Egypt and dwell there for many generations. 
The history of Joseph tells how that was brought about, and 
so it has its place in the Hebrew annals ; while in itself it 
possesses, as we have seen, a thrilling interest of its own, 
and is fraught with lessons of great value for our modern 
life. But to get at these it is not needful to go into a minute 
recapitulation of its details, and we may, therefore, content 
ourselves with describing the different scenes, if so we may 
call them, in that act of the drama which forms the special 
subject for this evening's discourse. 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 123 

The first is in the Hebron home of Jacob and his sons. 
The pressure of famine is again upon the encampment, and 
Jacob says to his sons, "Go again, buy us a little food." 
This is only what his sons have waited for. They knew that 
necessity would soon constrain him to accede to Joseph's 
terms, and therefore, after his first outburst of impatient op- 
position, they left him to his own reflections, and allowed him 
to take the initiative. But so soon as he opened up the sub- 
ject again, Judah, who comes now to the front, and manifests 
the highest wisdom, and the greatest consideration for all 
parties concerned, took speech in hand. He reminded his 
father that it would be only making matters worse for them 
if they should return to Egypt without Benjamin, since that 
would be interpreted by the Egyptian lord as an evidence 
that they had spoken untruly on their former visit, and would 
probably end in the imprisonment of them all along with 
Simeon ; so that, as the result, he would have neither food 
nor sons, save Benjamin only. And when his father petu- 
lantly asked why they had told the great man that they had 
another brother, he defended their conduct by describing how 
the information had, as it were, been forced out of them by 
the accusation that they were spies, and by the repeated 
interrogations of their questioner, consequent upon their 
statement that they were all sons of one man. This account 
seems at first slightly inconsistent with that given in the nar- 
rative of their first visit, but all discrepancy is removed by 
the remembrance of the fact that the history does not pre- 
tend to give a full report of all that passed at their interview 
with Joseph, so that there is no need to impute to Judah any 
falsification of the facts of the case. 

There was no resisting the force of his words when he 
asked, "Could we certainly know that he would say. Bring 
your brother down ?" But the power of his appeal, great as 
it was, was strengthened when, with a noble spirit of self-sac- 



124 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

rifice, he offered to become surety for Benjamin's safety, and 
added, "except we had lingered, surely now we had returned 
this second time." It is curious to note how here the differ- 
ent individualities of Reuben and Judah come out in their 
methods of dealing with their father. Reuben, in his impet- 
uous way, not meaning the half of what he said, exclaimed, 
" Slay my two sons if I bring him not to thee; deliver him 
into my hand, and I will bring him to thee ;" a perfectly pre- 
posterous proposition, the very extravagance of which be- 
tokened that he who made it was not to be trusted for con- 
stancy, since such ardor could not last. Judah, however, put 
not his sons but himself in the gap ; and in that Jacob saw 
the pledge not only of his sincerity, but also of his deter- 
mination at all hazards to make good his promise. To him, 
therefore, his father yielded ; and mindful of what gifts had 
formerly done to mollify his brother Esau, Jacob recom- 
mended his sons to take with them a present of such things 
as they had, and carry it down to him whom they were all so 
desirous to propitiate. This present consisted of some of 
the most famous productions of their country, such as the 
famine had still left to them ; and in the description here 
given of their gift there is incidental evidence of the straits 
to which they were reduced — " a little balm, and a little honey, 
spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds/^ Besides these things 
Jacob commanded his sons to take with them not only money 
enough for their new purchase, but also that which had for- 
merly been restored to them, lest there should have been 
some mistake about it which might lead to unpleasant con- 
sequences. Then, as they were starting, with the son of 
Rachel under their care, the old piety of Israel came out, as 
he looked reverently up and said, in mingled faith and res- 
ignation, " God Almighty give you mercy before the man, 
that he may send away your other brother, and Benjamin. 
If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved." 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 125 

The scene now changes to Egypt. The brothers have ar- 
rived at the pubh'c storehouse to make their application for 
supplies. Joseph is in his office attending to his wonted 
business, and sees them in the street. With eager eye he 
scans the company, and discovers, with a palpitating heart, 
that Benjamin is with them. So, without waiting to converse 
with them, or even to receive them, he sends out his steward 
to take them to his house, and make all preparations for their 
dining with him at noon. It has been objected here that the 
narrator must be in error in representing Joseph as giving 
orders for the slaughter of animals for food, since that must 
have been contrary to the customs of the Egyptians ; but 
Wilkinson, in describing preparations for dinner, says,^ "an 
ox, kid, wild-goat, gazelle, or oryx, and a quantity of geese, 
widgeons, quails, or other birds were obtained for the occa- 
sion f and Kalisch alleges f that " though there was scarce- 
ly an animal which was not held sacred in some province, 
there was, perhaps, with the only exception of the cow, none 
which was not eaten in other parts of the land ;" so that the 
description here is in perfect harmony with what v/e now 
know to have been the habit of the people. 

But the taking of the sons of Jacob to the house of Jo- 
seph was, at first, a source of perplexity to them. They 
could not understand for what purpose they were conducted 
thither. They were not informed of his hospitable intent, 
and imagined that they were to be called in question about 
the money which they had found in their sacks on their re- 
turn from their former visit ; therefore they took the oppor- 
tunity, as they were approaching the palace, to make the 
steward acquainted with the true state of the case. But as 
soon as he understood the nature of their anxiety, he reas- 

* '* Ancient Egyptians," vol. ii., p. 22. 

t Quoted in " Pulpit Commentary," vol. i., p. 484. 



126 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

sured them by telling them in the kindest manner that he 
had received their money and knew all about it, and by 
bringing Simeon out to them that they might be all united 
once again. One cannot but marvel at the spirit manifested 
by this servant. He seems, indeed, to have been taken by 
his master into his confidence for the occasion, and the 
words which he uses would indicate either that Joseph had 
told him precisely what to say, or that he was himself, under 
the influence and example of Joseph, a believer in Jehovah; 
for thus he speaks : " Peace be to you, fear not : your God, 
and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your 
sacks : I had your money." Surely now, therefore, they 
would be set at rest, for was not this an answer to their f^i- 
ther's prayer, "God Almighty give you mercy before the 
man ?" That impression would be deepened when they saw 
that the steward treated them as his master's guests, and 
gave them water for their feet and provender for their asses, 
telling them at the same time that they should eat bread 
there. So they got their present ready, and when Joseph 
came they put it into his hands and bowed themselves to 
the earth, thus once again fulfilling the dream of his youth. 
Then came the question, " Is your father well, the old man 
of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive?" and once more they 
made obeisance with the answer, "Thy servant our father is 
in good health, he is yet alive," thus uniting their father in 
their homage at his feet. But when he saw Benjamin, it was 
a little more than he could do to keep up the part which he 
had been studiously acting, and without waiting for an an- 
swer to his inquiry, "Is this your younger brother, of whom 
ye spake unto me?" he said, with the deepest feeling, "God 
be gracious unto thee, my son," and hastened into his cham- 
ber to hide the tears which he could no longer restrain. 
Then, after having given way for a season to his uncontrol- 
lable emotion, he washed his face to remove all traces of his 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 127 

weeping, and went back to preside over the banquet which 
he had caused to be prepared for them. 

The next scene, therefore, is in the dining-hall. Joseph 
sits by himself; the Egyptians of his household are seated 
by themselves ; and the eleven brothers by themselves, yet 
not indiscriminately; for somewhat to their amazement, and 
tending, no doubt, to deepen the mystery of their reception, 
he caused them to be placed in the order of their age — ** the 
first-born according to his birthright, and the youngest ac- 
cording to his youth.'' And now he begins that testing or- 
deal to which, all unknown to them, he designed to submit 
his half-brothers. They had been jealous of him in the old- 
en time because his father had shown a partiality for him, 
and they had preferred their own indulgence to his welfare, 
selling him into slavery rather than give up their evil courses. 
He determines now, therefore, to see whether they have the 
same disposition towards Benjamin. If they have, he will 
keep Benjamin in Egypt along with himself; but if they have 
not, then the door may be opened for bringing all his breth- 
ren and his father with them, to sojourn in the land of plen- 
ty. That, as it seems to me, is the key to the explanation 
of all his after-dealings with them. He commences by send- 
ing to Benjamin a portion from that which was before him, 
five times larger than that which he had sent to any of the 
others. That was a mark of his preference, almost as great 
as his father had shown him in giving him the coat of many 
colors ; and from what happened when Elkanah gave to Han- 
nah " a worthy portion," thereby provoking Peninnah to jeal- 
ousy,* we may be sure that if they had been envious of Ben- 
jamin they would have revealed it by their remarks upon 
his procedure. But no such manifestation was made by 
them, and the feast was one of harmonious gladness, be- 

* I Sam. i., 4-8. 



128 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

tokening that all were delighted with his hospitality, "for 
they drank and were merry with him.'' 

But now the scene changes once again. It is the early 
morning, and they are all up and eager to start for home. 
Before they had arisen, the steward, by Joseph's orders, had 
filled their sacks with corn, and had put every man's money 
into his sack's mouth, and along with that a silver cup of a 
peculiar description in the sack of Benjamin. And now ev- 
erything being ready for their departure, they set out upon 
their asses, Judah's heart beating with especial joy that Ben- 
jamin was riding by his side. But they had scarcely cleared 
the city when they were overtaken by the steward, who ac- 
cused them of having stolen a valuable cup. "Wherefore," 
said he, "have ye rewarded evil for good? Is not this it in 
which my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth?" 
A great deal has been made of this expression, and of Jo- 
seph's own words later, "Wot ye not that such a man as I 
can certainly divine?" but the sum of the matter seems to 
be this : the Egyptians did practise divination by cups. 
How that was done is not now certainly known, but accord- 
ing to some authorities a liquid was poured into a saucer- 
shaped vase, and from the reflections on its surface various 
conclusions were drawn. Now, from what Joseph said to 
Pharaoh about the interpretation of his dreams, we have not 
only no reason to believe that he was guilty of any such de- 
ceit as to attempt to foretell the future, or to reveal the un- 
known by any such means, but, rather, every reason to believe 
that he would have repudiated such folly. Just now, how- 
ever, he is acting a part, and he adapts himself and his lan- 
guage to the character which he has assumed. That he was 
perfectly justified in preserving his incognito I have little 
doubt, but whether or not he here rather overdid his acting 
may be a matter of question. Still, that he might do even that 
without giving countenance to divination is abundantly clear. 



fc> 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 129 

When the steward thus intercepted the brothers they were 
greatly disconcerted, and, conscious of their innocence, they 
offered to submit themselves to search, saying, " With whom- 
soever of thy servants the cup is found, both let him die, 
and we also will be my lord's bondmen." But with great 
apparent fairness he replied, " He with whom it is found shall 
be my servant : and ye shall be blameless." So the search 
proceeded, and, to their dismay, " the cup was found in Ben- 
jamin's sack." But they would not give him up alone, and 
returned with him to Joseph's house, with their clothes rent 
and their hearts heavy, to see what could be done. When 
Joseph upbraided them foi: their ingratitude, Judah, unable 
to contradict the evidence which had been brought against 
them, and with no word of blame for Benjamin — a thing 
which in the circumstances was most remarkable, and speaks 
much for his confidence in his younger brother — said, with 
great simplicity, " What shall we say unto my lord ? what shall 
we speak } or how shall we clear ourselves ? God hath found 
out the iniquity of thy servants: behold, we are my lord's 
servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found." 
But Joseph would not hear of any such injustice. The rest 
might go home, and the guilty one alone should be retained. 
That was his decision. Then Judah stood forward and plead- 
ed the cause of Benjamin, in an appeal which for simple pa- 
thos, and that natural eloquence which " when unadorned " 
is "adorned the most," is unsurpassed either in sacred or 
secular literature, whether of ancient or modern times. No 
summary can do it justice, and every variation from it would 
only mar its beauty; therefore I will simply read it, that you 
may feel its force : 

*' O my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord's 
ears, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant : for thou «;-/ even 
as Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants, saying. Have ye a father, or a 
brother ? And we said unto my lord. We have a father, an old man, and 

6* 



130 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

a child of his old age, a little one ; and his brother is dead, and he alone 
is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. And thou saidst unto 
thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes upon 
him. And we said unto my lord, The lad cannot leave his father : for if 
he should leave his father, >^/j-y?7/>^^?' would die. And thou saidst unto 
thy servants. Except your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall 
see my face no more. And it came to pass when we came up unto thy 
servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. And our father 
said. Go again, and buy us a little food. And we said, We cannot go 
down : if our youngest brother be with us, then will we go down : for we 
may not see the man's face, except our youngest brother be with us. And 
thy servant my father said unto us, Ye know that my wife bare me two 
sojis : And the one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in 
pieces; and I saw him not since : And if ye take this also from me, and 
mischief befall him, ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to 
the grave. Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and 
the lad be not with us; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life; 
It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not ivith us^ that he 
will die : and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of thy servant 
our father with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant became surety 
for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him not unto thee, then 
I shall bear the blame to my father for ever. Now therefore, I pray 
thee, let thy servant abide instead of the lad a bondman to my lord ; 
and let the lad go up with his brethren. For how shall I go up to 
my father, and the lad be not with me? lest peradventure I see the 
evil that shall come on my father." * 

Even if Joseph had been only an Egyptian magnate such 
an intercession must have gained its end, but, being the man 
he was, it moved his soul to the very depths. It showed 
him that his brothers were not only sorry for what they had 
done to him, but were so changed that now they could be 
trusted by him implicitly. Their penitence had been proved 
to be sincere by their conduct. Therefore, there and then, 
he gave up all idea of detaining Benjamin, and resolved to 
make himself known to them, and invite them and their fam- 

* Gen. xliv., 18-34. 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 131 

ilies and his father to take up their abode in Egypt. So with 
a full heart he caused every one to leave his presence save 
themselves, and then, with no spectators to mar the confi- 
dences of the interview, he told them who he was, and how 
it had been with him. He asked again after his father; and 
when he saw that they were troubled lest he should seek to 
punish them for their unkindness to him, he led their thoughts 
up to the Providence which had overruled their evil for the 
good of a whole nation, and for the welfare of their father's 
house. Then, after sending a warm request to Jacob to 
come and see all his glory in Egypt, he turned to Benjamin, 
and fell upon his neck and wept. " Moreover, he kissed all 
his brethren, and wept upon them, and after that his brethren 
talked with him." How natural it all is ! How exquisitely 
told ! and how remarkable that there should be no effort on 
the part of the narrator to describe the surprise of the broth- 
ers at the unexpected revelation, or to recount the conversa- 
tion which followed on the reconciliation ! 

And this is the sort of narrative which we are to believe 
is a poetic fable, with no more foundation on fact than one 
of the myths of Grecian literature, or the prehistoric stories 
that are told about the founders of ancient Rome ! I am 
willing to put the two side by side, and await the verdict of 
any candid investigator as to the internal evidence of their 
relative veracity. But I must leave the sequel of the recog- 
nition, and the details of the message to Jacob, for another 
discourse, while I turn now to pick up a few lessons from 
the interesting chapters over which we have come. 

We may see then, in the first place, that fear misinterprets 
kindness. When the brothers were taken to Joseph's house, 
they at once concluded that some evil was intended for them, 
and began to excuse themselves to the steward about the 
money which they had found in their sacks, telling him at 
the same time that they had brought it with them again, and 



/ 



132 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

were ready to restore it to Joseph, to whom it rightfully be- 
longed. But how were all such suspicions rebuked when 
they learned that they were to dine at his house ! and how 
utterly ridiculous they would seem, at length, when they 
found out that he was their brother ! But is it not just simi- 
lar with the sinner and his God ? He is afraid of the Lord, 
and that leads him to misinterpret all his dealings with him. 
When he is asked into God's house, he supposes it must be 
just that he may be made miserable; and when the Lord 
makes to him overtures of love, they seem to him to be but 
the precursors of punishment. All this is because he has 
not yet discovered that God is his father and Christ his elder 
brother. When the day comes that Jehovah shall thus re- 
veal himself to him, there will be a weeping like that of Jo- 
seph here, but it will be all on his side ; and the fear which 
persistently made him misunderstand God's dealings will be 
cast out by perfect love. My hearers, the Gospel feast is 
prepared. All things are ready; and as one of the stewards 
of my Lord's house, I am come to lead you to his palace, 
that you may feast with him. Be not afraid. He is your 
father, and Christ is your brother ; therefore, stand not hesi- 
tatingly and tremblingly without, but take your places at his 
banquet, and rejoice in his salvation. 

AVe may see here, in the second place, that we are often 
being tested while we are unconscious of the fact that we are 
so. The whole treatment of his brothers by Joseph was meant 
to prove their characters, and see whether they had or had not 
repented of their sin against him, and whether they had or 
had not changed their disposition and mode of life. They did 
not know that he was thus experimenting on them, but the re- 
sult satisfied him, and led to his revelation of himself to them. 
Now, it is often similar with men and their fellows. When 
Gideon led his army to the brook, and saw his soldiers drink, 
they had no idea that he was picking out his three hundred 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 133 

for his midnight attack on the Midianitish camp. But so it 
was; for those who did not care luxuriously to go down on 
hands and knees to put their mouths to the stream, but who 
simply lapped the w^ater up with their hands as a dog laps 
with his tongue, showed thereby that they had the qualities 
of rapidity, dash, and hardihood which were specially need- 
ed for the service on which he was bent, and, therefore, they 
were selected for it. Even so men have been watched by 
others when they were not thinking of anything of the kind, 
and the diligence, energy, integrity, and amiability which 
they have shown has commended them to those interested 
for some situation of trust, honor, and emolument. Young 
man, your employer is testing you when you do not know it, 
therefore see that you are faithful and obliging even in that 
which is least, that you may approve yourself worthy of some- 
thing greater. Many incidents might here be narrated to 
prove that men have risen from comparative obscurity to 
eminence simply because they had been tested, unwittingly 
to themselves, by others who were on the outlook for the 
agents that would most effectually serve their purpose. When 
they rose, envious people prated about "luck,'*' but they 
who knew best spoke about character manifested by faithful- 
ness in that which was least, and saw in their promotion the 
earthly miniature of the doing of the last Judge, who shall 
say to him whom he approves, "Thou hast been faithful over 
a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord.'* Nay, does not the very 
quotation which I have just made remind us that it is in the 
same way, and while we are unconscious of it, that the Lord 
tests those who are to come before him at the last. He will 
say to those on his right hand, "I was an hungered and ye 
gave me meat;" and they will exclaim in astonishment, "Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungered and gave thee meat ?" He 
will say to those on his left hand, "I was an hungered and 



134 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ye gave me no meat f and they will cry out amazed, " When 
saw we thee an hungered and gave thee no meat ?'' They 
had not been conscious that they were undergoing a testing 
process, and yet by that their characters w-ere judged, even 
as here Joseph gauges the feelings of the brothers towards 
Benjamin, by the little thing of sending to him a portion five 
times larger than each of theirs. Oh, my hearers, we are 
being tested when we know not of it ! how important, there- 
fore, that we do everything^ small as well as great, in the 
name of the Lord Jesus. 
\ But we have in this history, in the third place, an illustra- 
tion of the difference between the outer appearance and the 
inner life of a man. Joseph externally was a stranger to his 
brothers, but internally his heart, latterly at least, was yearn- 
ing over them, and he had once and again to retire to his 
chamber to give vent to his tears. But is he not herein 
very like most men at some time or other in their lives 1 Go 
down to-morrow to the stores and examine the faces of those 
whom you find in them. Some will look calm and com- 
posed, almost marbly in their impassivity. Others may look 
jovial — ever and anon a ringing laugh comes from the cor- 
ner where their desks are, and you call them cheerful. Yes; 
but that is only the outward appearance. Suppose you could 
uncover the heart of each, what a contrast to the calmness, 
in the one case, and the joyousness, in the other, you might 
discover ! Suppose you knew the entire life of each, how 
often you might find them both retiring to their chambers to 
weep ! The proverb says that '* there is a skeleton in every 
house," and it is equally true that there is a secret chamber 
in every heart where the soul keeps its skeleton, and to which, 
when it can no longer control itself, it retires to weep. What 
is in that secret chamber? It may be the memory of some 
sin; it may be a hidden cross of such a nature that it can be 
described to no mortal; it may be — but why should I probe 



The Second Visit of the Brothers to Egypt. 135 

into those things with which a stranger may not intermed- 
dle ? Each of you knows his own, and whatever yours may 
be, my friend, take it to Christ. Give him your confidence, 
and you will find how true the exquisite hymn of Horatius 
Bonar is when it says, 

"I lay my griefs on Jesus, 
My burdens and my cares ; 
He from them all releases, 
He all my sorrow bears." 

But I must not be one-sided here. There is a joy which 
is a secret in the heart as well as a sorrow, and the Christian 
knows something of that. Externally his life may be dull, 
commonplace, routine. There may seem nothing very par- 
ticular about himself, but there is hidden sweetness in his 
soul. He is at peace with God, and that takes him every 
now and then into his chamber, not to weep, but to sing. 
He "carries music in his heart," and no matter how prosaic 
or humdrum to outward appearance his life may be, that 
gives it a poetry that is peculiarly its own. Do you know 
anything of such an experience as that ? If 3'ou do, it is a 
foretaste and earnest of the "white-stone," with the new 
name written in it, "which no man knoweth save he that 

- receiveth it." It is the beginning of your heaven. 

Finally, how can we read this touching appeal of Judah for 

/ Benjamin without being reminded of Christ's intercession for 
us? The Lord Jesus not only offered to become our surety, 
but was accepted as such, and now, having offered himself in 
sacrifice in the tabernacle court — which is this lower world 
— he has entered through the veil into the heavenly holy of 
holies, where he maketh intercession for us. His intercession 
takes in all who come unto God by him, and yet it takes in 
everything about each of them. Judah's plea had a powerful 
ally in Joseph's love, and in the same way the intercession of 



136 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Jesus is sure of success for us, for the love of God is already 
on our side; therefore let us have perfect confidence that he 
will "bring to pass that which is good for us, and make perfect 
that which concerneth us.'' O sinner, arraigned before God's 
bar, and conscious of your guilt, commit your case to this 
surety, sacrifice, and advocate all in one, and he will secure 
not only your acquittal but your acceptance — your salvation. 



X. 

THE REMOVAL OF JACOB AND HIS SONS TO 

EGYPT 

Gen. xlv., i6 ; xlvi., i-6, 28-34 ; xlvii., i-io. 

IN the interests of brevity we were constrained, in our last 
discourse, to pass very lightly over two things that came 
out in Joseph's interview of reconciliation with his brethren, 
and it may be well to go back upon them for a few moments 
now. The first is his magnanimity towards them. He saw 
that they had fully repented of their sin against him, and 
therefore, w-hen he observed that they were troubled at his 
presence, he said to them, " Be not grieved, nor angry with 
yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me be- 
fore you to preserve life. For these two years hath the fam- 
ine been in the land : and 3^et there are five years, in the which 
there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me 
before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to 
save your lives by a great deliverance." Had they not been 
really penitent it might have been dangerous to preach such 
doctrine to them. But they had come to hate their sin, and 
were now in such a state of mind regarding it as to be verg- 
ing towards despair, so that they required to be encouraged 
and comforted. And nothing could have been better calcu- 
lated to lift them out of their despondency than the presen- 
tation of this aspect of the divine providence. It did not 
make their guilt less serious, but it did make God more ar, 
tractive. As one has very epigrammatically expressed it, 
"God does not need our sins to work out his good inten- 



138 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

tions, but we give him little other material ; and the discovery 
that through our evil purposes and injurious deeds God has 
worked out his beneficent will, is certainly not calculated to 
make us think more lightly of our sins, or more highly of 
ourselves.""^ It only shows that a holy and loving God has 
been watching over us, and, therefore, strengthens the new 
bond between us and him which our penitence has made. 
To say to a hardened, reckless man that God will ever rule 
his sin for some good end, will only make him more regard- 
less than ever. But when a man is truly penitent, and seems 
almost paralyzed by the perception of his guilt, to show him 
that God has brought good out of his evil will exalt God's 
grace and wisdom in his eyes, and lead him more implicitly 
to cling to him. It is a comforting thought, that while we 
cannot undo the sin, God has kept it from undoing us, and 
has overruled it for greater good to ourselves and greater 
blessing to others than, perhaps, might otherwise have been 
attained. We can never be as we were before we committed 
it. Always there will be some sadness in our hearts and 
lives connected with it, and springing out of it. But still, if 
we really repent of it and return to God, there may come to 
us "meat out of the eater, and sweet out of the bitter." It 
may give us sympathy with others, and fit us for being help- 
ful to others, so that, though we may be sadly conscious of 
the evil of our course, we may yet see that through it all God 
was preparing us for the saving of those who, humanly speak- 
ing, but for our instrumentality would have gone down to per- 
dition. But mark the condition — if we truly repent. There 
is no comfort otherwise ; but that being secured, then the 
penitent may take the consolation, that out of his worst sin 
God can and may bring good both to himself and others, 
and he ought to look for the means of bringing that about. 

* Dods's " Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph," p. 245. 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 139 

But the second thing in this interview on which I wish 
now to remark, is the tender regard of Joseph for his father. 
Whatever may have been the reason for his not communi- 
cating with Jacob for so many years, we see that now there 
is no lack of filial affection in his heart. It was the pathetic 
reference of Judah to the probable result of Benjamin's de- 
tention on his father that fairly broke him down and opened 
up the fountain of his tears. Again and again he inquired 
after the old man's welfare. He seemed impatient now to 
see his face again, and urged his brothers to hasten home 
and tell the tidings '' that he is alive and well, and lord over 
all Egypt." He sent also a very pressing and affectionate 
invitation to his father to come and sojourn near him ; and 
with the absolute assurance that Pharaoh would give him 
everything he chose to ask for his kindred, as well as with a 
view to their happiness and prosperity, he promised that they 
should dwell in the land of Goshen. It would seem, there- 
fore, that the love which had been so long pent up had only 
gathered strength by being repressed, so that when it found 
vent again it flowed forth with more fervor and intensity than 
ever. Across the gulf of many years memory leaped as with 
a bound, and he was once more a boy again, basking in his 
father's affection. Then he was the ward of his parent, but 
now he would repay the kindness by becoming Jacob's pro- 
tector ; and no difference in rank or station between them 
would keep him from enjoying the privileges and performing 
the duties of a son. A ruler to the Egyptians, he w^as and 
would still be a son to Jacob ; for he carried to his throne, 
unsophisticated and unaltered, the heart that beat beneath 
the coat of many colors. He was not ashamed of his father, 
but the greatest joy of his exaltation was that he was there- 
by enabled to make provision for the wants of Jacob's declin- 
ing years. There is a worthy example, young men, for you. 
Never lose your pride in your parents or your love for them. 



I40 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Never think of slighting their poverty in the days of your 
prosperity; but share your honors with them, and give them 
if you can the pride of seeing you in " all your glory.'' 

But now resuming the narrative, we need not wonder that 
the recognition of his brothers by Joseph became speedily 
known to those who were about him. Oriental emotion is 
demonstrative, and the sounds of weeping coming from the 
chamber in which they were would lead to curious inquiries 
as to its cause. Very soon, therefore, the news reached the 
ears of Pharaoh that Joseph's brethren were come, and the 
monarch gave such orders as showed how highly he valued 
his servant, and how glad he was of the opportunity of doing 
him a kindness. After consultation, as we may presume, 
with Joseph himself, he bade the brothers lade their beasts 
and return at once to Canaan ; he invited their father, them- 
selves, and their households to return and sojourn in Egypt; 
he promised that they should eat the fat of the land ; he gave 
them wagons for the removal of their belongings ; and to all 
these gifts Joseph added changes of raiment for each of his 
half-brothers, but five changes of raiment and three hundred 
pieces of silver for Benjamin. Then "to his father he sent 
ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she 
asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his father by 
the way." So he despatched them on their journey, giving 
them this parting admonition, '• See that ye fall not out by 
the way." 

How well he knew human nature ! They were going home 
with news which would reveal to their father that they had 
been the cause of their brother's disappearance, and had im- 
posed on him with a deliberate falsehood; and for anything 
they knew, he might turn upon them and upbraid them with 
their cruelty and deceit. What so likely, therefore, as that 
they should begin to accuse each other — that crimination 
should lead to recrimination, and words to blows? Reuben 



The Removal of Jacob *and his Sons to Egypt. 141 

might say again, "It was not my fault, for I sought to save 
his life, and I went back to the pit hoping to find him and 
restore him to our father.'' Judah might respond, "But for 
me he would have died, and it is to my happy suggestion to 
sell him to the Ishmaelites that we are indebted for all the 
good fortune that seems now to be coming to us;" while 
the rest, conscious of their share in the nefarious transac- 
tion, might have sought to still the upbraidings of their con- 
sciences by uttering bitter things against each other. All 
that might have happened on their journey home, and so 
Joseph was not giving unnecessary counsel when he said, 
" See that ye fall not out by the way." And they heeded his 
advice, for they reached home in peace; and it may be that, 
so far from quarrelling, they spent some of their time as they 
rode in conversing on the marvellous manner in which, in 
spite of their antagonism, and without their consciousness of 
anything in the least degree out of the way, the dreams of 
their brother had been fulfilled, and they had done obeisance 
at his feet. 

When they arrived at Hebron and told the news to their 
father, he was utterly overwhelmed. He could not believe 
their words. On their own showing, they had deceived him 
before; what ground had he for assurance that they were not 
deceiving him again ? It was a strange experience. He was 
in a place where two seas met, and he was wellnigh sub- 
merged by the violence of the waves. If they spoke truly, 
then he might yet see his long-lost son; but all these years 
his other children had been guilty of the blackest deceit, and 
was he to lose them in the finding of their brother? or was 
he to have them nil thoroughly restored to him as brothers 
indeed ? Surely they could not wantonly play with his feel- 
ings a second time } And yet, were not their tidings too 
good to be true ? In this uncertainty — ^just as when a bal- 
ance is on the turn a very little thing will give it impulse — 



142 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

the sight of the wagons gave the relief he needed, and the 
old Israel energy flamed forth, so that he said, " It is enough ; 
Joseph my son is yet alive:' I will go and see him before I 
die." But what was there in the sight of the wagons to cor- 
roborate their tidings? The answer may be given in the 
words of Thornley Smith:* "It is probable that wagons 
w^ere at that time not known in Palestine, whence Jacob in- 
ferred that these wagons had been sent from Egypt, where 
his sons could not have obtained them but in the manner 
they stated. A common kind of wagon having two wheels 
has been found depicted on some of the monuments; but 
these were no doubt of a superior description, and being 
covered to screen the travellers from the sun, as we may pre- 
sume they were, would be somewhat similar to the tilted 
wagons of modern times." 

Convinced thus of the good faith of his sons, Jacob speedi- 
ly made all preparations, and set out with his whole encamp- 
ment from Hebron for the land of Egypt. But it was not 
without misgivings that he was taking this important step. 
He had a peculiar interest in the land of Canaan. It had 
been promised to him and to his children by God in cove- 
nant. Twenty-one years of his life had been spent outside 
of its borders, and he had come back to it again with new 
assurances that it was yet to be his own. It was therefore, 
in spite of the attraction that he was going to meet Joseph, 
a great trial to him to leave the Land of Promise. Besides, 
it had in it the Cave of Machpelah, where the bodies of his 
father and his grandfather had been laid, and he felt it hard 
to leave them behind. Nor was this all Egypt had been 
an unpropitious place, apparently, both to Isaac and to Abra- 
ham, for each of them, during a brief sojourn there, had 
come into collision with its king, and it seemed almost as 

* "Joseph and his Times," p. 167. 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 143 

if it would not be safe for him — even with Joseph so near 
the throne — to venture within its borders. It was, we may 
suppose, with such feelings as these that Jacob found him- 
self, in the course of his journey, at Beersheba. That was a 
well on the very edge of Canaan, just where it merges into 
the desert, and the place was dear to Jacob for its associa- 
tions both with his father and with Abraham. There Abra- 
ham had planted a grove, and called upon the name of the 
Lord, the Everlasting God, and there Isaac had his encamp- 
ment for many years; thence, too, it was that Jacob went 
out to begin his wanderings on the morning of that day 
whose evening was brightened for him at Bethel by the vis- 
ion of the ladder and the angels. Naturally, therefore, his 
thoughts at that place were with his fathers and his fathers' 
God; and considering the nature of the journey which he 
was taking, we are not surprised to learn that there "he of- 
fered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.'' He made 
supplication to the Lord through sacrifice, and with special 
reference to the circumstances in which he was at the mo- 
ment placed. Nor did he consult God in vain; for in the 
visions of the night the Lord said to him, "I am God, the 
God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I 
will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with 
thee into Egypt ; and I will also surely bring thee up again : 
and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." Thus re- 
assured, he rose and resumed his journey, and when they 
drew nigh to their destination he sent Judah on before to 
apprise Joseph of their arrival, and to ask for instructions 
from his lips. 

But when Joseph heard of his father's approach he went 
out himself to meet him, and when they saw each other "he 
fell on his father's neck, and wept on his neck a good while." 
Joseph's heart was too full for words, and when at length his 
father could command himself sufficiently for speech, it was 



144 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

but to say, "It is enough; now let me die, since I have seen 
thy face, because thou art yet alive." After these salutations 
Joseph gave his brothers plain directions as to what they 
should say to Pharaoh on their introduction to the monarch. 
He anticipated that the king would ask them what their oc- 
cupation was, and he told them to reply that they were shep- 
herds, because that was true and because he knew that such 
a confession would secure them a settlement away from the 
other inhabitants, in a district in which they could hold them- 
selves aloof, not only from entangling alliances with the peo- 
ple, but also from contamination by the idolatries of the land : 
for "every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians." 
This prejudice, however, was not owing to any hatred of the 
Hyksos or shepherd dynasty that was now upon the throne, 
but rather to a deep-rooted spirit of caste among the people 
themselves. Herodotus tells us that the swine-herds — one of 
the seven classes into which the Egyptians were divided — were 
regarded with such abhorrence that they were not allowed 
to enter a temple or contract marriage with any others of 
their countrymen, and Wilkinson^ testifies that pastors and 
shepherds were a class apart from the peasantry, and were 
held in such disrepute that the artists, as if to show their 
contempt, have represented them upon the monuments as 
lame or deformed, as dirty and unshaven, and sometimes of 
a most ludicrous appearance. From the very character of 
their country the Egyptians were essentially an agricultural 
people, and as such they associated ideas of rudeness and 
barbarism with those who, like shepherds, followed a wan- 
dering life. It may be, also, that part of their prejudice was 
due to the fact that shepherds were accustomed to kill ani- 
mals that were regarded as sacred by other classes of the 
community. But whatever may have been the reason for 

* ** The Ancient Egyptians," vol. i., p. 2S9, and vol. iii., p. 444. 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 145 

such sentiments, Joseph did not wish his brethren to be ex- 
posed to the contempt with which he knew the Egyptians 
would treat them as shepherds, and he sought at the same 
time to turn their occupation to their advantage by securing 
for them the very eligible territory of the land of Goshen. 

That was a region lying to the north-east of Lower Egypt, 
bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, on the east by 
the desert, on the west by the Tanitic branch of the Nile, 
and probably extending on the south as far as to the head of 
the Red Sea. It was under the dominion of the Pharaohs, 
and therefore in Egypt, though it was scarcely of it, for it 
was little more than on the confines of the countr3^ It is 
called elsewhere the land of Rameses, and under the Pha- 
raoh of the oppression the Israelites built in it the treasure- 
cities of Pithom and Rameses. It was a land of pasturage, 
suitable for the feeding of flocks, and both for that reason 
and because it was nearest to Palestine, and yet not far from 
his own residence, Joseph regarded it as most advantageous 
for the members of his father's family. 

When, therefore, he took some of his brothers and pre- 
sented them to Pharaoh, they followed closely his instruc- 
tions, and went so far as to ask that because of their occupa- 
tion and for the sake of their flocks they might be permitted 
to settle in Goshen. This request was instantly granted, and 
Joseph was commanded, if he should see fit, and if he knew 
that any of them were qualified for the office, to give them 
the charge of the royal herds. 

Then, after their audience was over, he led his venerable 
father, with pride and affection, into the royal presence, and 
presented him to Pharaoh. It was a memorable interview. 
The greatest monarch of the time, the ablest statesman of 
his age, who was steadily steering Egypt through the fearful 
calamity of famine, and the oldest saint then upon the earth, 
heir to the promises made by God to Abraham and Isaac, 

7 



146 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

were here brought into closest contact. Never before or 
since has such a trio met, and we cannot read the account 
of the interview without remarking how true religion glorifies 
the commonplace and lifts it up into a region that is literally 
sublime. One sees something of the same thing in what 
have been called the familiar personal epistles of the New 
Testament, namely, the letter of Paul to Philemon, and those 
of John to Gains and the Elect Lady ; for in the former the 
sending of a request for favor to Onesimus, and in the latter 
the transmission of an ordinary friendly communication, are 
made vital and luminous both with faith and holiness. They 
all conform to the common forms of epistolary correspond- 
ence that were in use at the time, and yet they all fill these 
forms with living Christianity. So here Jacob comes before 
Pharaoh with the respect that was ordinarily given to a mon- 
arch ; but how differently does that respect express itself in 
his case from those of ordinary presentations at court. He 
begins and ends the interview with a benediction. He does 
not hide his faith from the king, but he manifests it in such 
a way as to make it minister to the royal welfare by asking 
for him the favor of the Most High. He w^ho had seen 
God face to face, and who had come to Egypt with the as- 
surance that God would accompany him, is not abashed be- 
fore royalty; but he does not presume, either, because of 
that, and therefore he shows his piety, not by admonition, but 
by benediction. Then when the monarch asked the ques- 
tion most natural in the circumstances, " How old art thou?" 
he made this most significant reply : "The days of the years 
of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years : few and 
evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not 
attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers 
in the days of their pilgrimage.'' This was one of the occa- 
sions referred to by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
in which the patriarchs "confessed that they were strangers 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 147 

and pilgrims." It was very true of the past of Jacob's life 
that it had been a pilgrimage, for he had been twenty-one 
years a stranger in the land of Padan-aram, and even after 
his return to Canaan he had not dwelt continuously in one 
place. For years, indeed, he had been at Hebron, near the 
Machpelah cave, where the ashes of his fathers' were en- 
tombed ; but now again he was away from the only spots of 
earth in Shechem and in Hebron which legally he could call 
his own. So with literal exactness he could say that his life 
had been a pilgrimage. But the expression had a forward 
as well as a backward look. It told that he was seeking a 
home beyond the grave, that he was desiring the better coun- 
try, "even the heavenly," and that his hopes were anchored 
there. It indicated that his feelings regarding his fathers 
were not so distinct and definite indeed, but of the same 
kind as those of Baxter when he wrote concerning a venera- 
ble relative who died at the age of a hundred years : " She 
is gone after many of my choicest friends, and I am follow- 
ing even at the door. Had I been to enjoy them only here, 
it would have been but a short comfort mixed with many 
troubles which all our failings and sins, and some degree of 
unsuitableness between the nearest and dearest, cause. But 
I am going after them, to that blessed society where life and 
light and love, and therefore harmony, concord, and joy are 
perfect and everlasting." Thrice happy they who can look 
forward to such an end of their pilgrimage ! 

Then with what artless simplicity Jacob describes the char- 
acter of his life — "Few and evil have the days of the years 
of my life been." Few ? Yes, in the retrospect, the longest 
life appears but brief. " We spend our years as a tale that is 
told." Evil .? Yes, for he had done much evil, and he had 
suffered much. They had not been only evil, for there were 
lines of light shot often through the gloom, but evil now 
preponderated in this view. "Alas ! for life, if this were all 



148 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

and naught beyond ! O earth !" There is no answering the 
Psalmist's question, " Wherefore hast thou made all men in 
vain?" unless we take immortality into the account; and if 
we did not believe in God, as the God and Father of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and in the life and immortality which our 
Saviour has brought to light, it would be hard to solve the 
question, " Is life worth living?" But take it as a pilgrimage 
to the better land beyond, and the journey will be held as 
more than compensated by the destination. Take it as a 
voyage "to the land immortal, the beautiful of lands," and 
the hardships of the passage will be as nothing compared 
with the glory to which it bears us, for 

" When the shore is won at last 
Who will count the billows past ?'* 

But now we must once more break off the interesting nar- 
rative, to gather up two or three valuable lessons. 

We may learn, then, in the first place, that in changing our 
residence, and going from one place to another, it is of the 
last imnortance that we secure that God shall o^o with us. 
One cannot read these chapters without thinking of the ex- 
periences of those who emigrate from the Old World to this 
new land, and of those who remove from our ovv^n Eastern 
districts to the new settlements in the West. How often it 
is almost literally repeated ! First there comes one of the 
sons of the household ; it may be, forced to leave his home 
by the envies and jealousies of those around him. On his 
arrival he has difficulties to contend with, and he has many 
alternations of fortune. Sometimes he is as prosperous ap- 
parently as Joseph was in the house of Potiphar, and some- 
times almost as far down as Joseph was when he was in 
prison. But at length he finds his sphere, and makes such 
good use of his opportunities that he attains to competence 
and comfort, even, it may be, to affluence. Then he sends 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 149 

for his parents, and the tie to the living, more strong than 
that to the dead, brings them across to enjoy in their latest 
days the tender nourishing of their long absent boy. Or 
again, it is in the far West, whither the young adventurer 
goes out to make his way in the world. He has had to en- 
dure many hardships, much that is little better than drudg- 
ery, and much that makes him often sigh for the home which 
he has left. But prosperity comes at last, and it will be 
robbed of half its joy to him if his parents cannot share it 
with him. So at his bidding they arise and go. Thus his- 
tory repeats itself, and this old story fits into multitudinous 
modern instances. But not always is sufficient heed given 
to the sacrificing at Beersheba ; and the point I make now 
is, that in all such changes we should seek, above all things 
else, the companionship of God. Nothing will harm us any- 
where if God is with us, and we cannot have the highest 
good if we go even into the fairest Goshen on the continent 
without him. Horace Greeley, long ago, set the fashion of 
saying, *^ Go West, young man, go West ;" and there is wis- 
dom in the advice, provided it be conjoined with the admo- 
nition, ''But don't go without your God.'' Perhaps some 
here are meditating on the propriety of their pushing away 
into the places where the labor market is not overstocked, 
and the opportunities are far better than they are in a com- 
paratively crowded city such as this. Nor do we say a word 
against the project. Go, by all means, if you are not afraid 
to work ; but remember the sacrifice at Beersheba, and don't 
go without your God. Too many have done that, and have 
gone to ruin. But take him with you, and he will be "your 
shield and your exceeding great reward." 

But, in the second place, learn from this narrative never 
to be ashamed of any honest calling. Joseph's brothers 
were to tell Pharaoh frankly that they were shepherds, and 
that led to their settlement in Goshen. So, if you can work 



150 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

at a good trade, never think such handicraft beneath you. 
Paul was a tent-maker, and a greater than Paul wrought at 
the carpenter's bench in Nazareth. I emphasize this, be- 
cause in these days there is a growing disposition among 
many to look down on trades and tradesmen. There is a 
spirit of caste among us, for all our boasted republicanism, 
as really as there was in Egypt. Every kind of handicraft is 
regarded by many as menial, and when you call a thing by 
that name men and women flee from it as from a pestilence. 
A young woman will reject comfort and safety in the situa- 
tion of a domestic assistant, and long for a place in a public 
store, because the one is menial and the other not. And so 
many evils are created among us. A young man with mark- 
ed mechanical ability will not go into the machine -sliop 
because that makes him a workman, but he wants to go 
into an office or a store because that makes him a clerk — 
for "every tradesman is an abomination to our modern ex- 
quisites." Hence good, honest, skilled artisans are hard to 
get, and so we have too much bad workmanship. Hence, 
too, the supply of clerks is far ahead of the demand; many 
are not employed at all, and those who are do not receive 
anything like an adequate salary, because their places can 
be supplied any day by others who will take less than they 
are receiving. It was a wise law among the Jews that every 
boy should learn a trade. He might follow it afterwards, or 
not, as he chose, but he had to learn one. It would be im- 
practicable to have any such law here; but I know that 
much misery would be prevented, and great good accom- 
plished if there were less caste among us in this matter of 
handicraft, and young men were more willing to work at the 
bench or at the forge. There is no disgrace in honest la- 
bor; nay, since Jesus lived at Nazareth it has become divine. 
Read such a life as that of George Stephenson, or James 
Nasmyth, or Ichabod Washburn, and see how the branch of 



The Removal of Jacob and his Sons to Egypt. 151 

opulence springs often out of the trunk of the tree of a com- 
mon handicraft. The labor may be common, but show you 
that the laborer is uncommon, and remember well that 

•' Honor and shame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part — there all the honor lies." 

Finally, remember that life at the longest is very short. 
Therefore, do at once that which you feel you ought to do 
at all Yea, do first that which is most important. Seek 
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Young 
man, do not leave it to a future day, but do it now, that all 
your life may be one of usefulness and enjoyment. Man of 
middle-age, you have a vivid sense of the rapidity with which 
your years have gone, but they will go just as rapidly in the 
future as in the past, and you will be on your death-bed be- 
fore you know it ; therefore, " what thy hands find to do, do 
it with thy might." Man of old-age, you have to make haste, 
for you have no time to lose. The ancient law said kindly 
as to the sale of an estate, " according to the number of the 
years thou shalt diminish the price;" the nearer they were to 
the Jubilee, the cheaper were they to sell their land. So 
the nearer you come to the end of your days, you ought to 
hold earthly things more loosely, and prize heavenly things 
more highly. When your business day is drawing to a close, 
you hasten to finish your work, and sometimes you do more 
in the last hour than in all that went before. As your paper 
becomes more filled you write more closely, to get all in that 
you want to say. And in the same way, the older you grow, 
you should become the more earnest in the service of your 
God in Christ. And if you have not yet begun to serve him, 
I beseech you to begin now ! When Napoleon came on the 
field of Marengo, it was late in the afternoon, and he saw 
that the battle was really lost. But looking at the western 
sun, he said, " There is just time to recover the day !" and 



152 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

giving out his orders with that rapid energy for which, com- 
bined with quick perception of what an emergency needed, 
he was so remarkable, he turned a defeat into a victory. So 
your sun is nearing its setting, but there is time, in the pres- 
ent opportunity, to "recover the day." Avail yourself of it, 
therefore, at once, lest your life should end in utter, blank, 
eternal failure. 



XL 

JOSEPH'S TWO VISITS TO HIS AGED FATHER. 
Gen. xlvii., 27 ; xlviii., 22. 

IT would be observed by those who were closely following 
us in our last discourse, that we made no mention what- 
ever of the genealogical list of the family of Jacob which is 
given in connection with the migration of the patriarch from 
Canaan to Egypt.* We took that course deliberately, in 
order that nothing of a merely formal sort might come in to 
break the continuity of our narrative, and no discussion of a 
question of difficulty might divert our attention from the 
practical lessons which the history suggested. But as the 
list to which I have referred has been a favorite armory 
whence antagonists have drawn weapons for attacking the 
truthfulness of the book of Genesis, and has been the oc- 
casion of much perplexity to many candid students of the 
Scriptures, it may be well to devote a little time now to its 
elucidation. 

The first thing that strikes the careful reader of this table 
is, that it contains the names of some who were not born at 
the date when Jacob went down to the land of Goshen. 
Thus, to say nothing of Hezron and Hamul, the grandsons 
of Judah, there are ten sons of Benjamin in the list; now, as 
Benjamin was a comparatively young man, somewhere be- 
tween twenty and thirty, at the time of his removal to Egypt, 
it is at least highly improbable that he should have had so 

* Gen. xlvi., 8-27. 
7^ 



154 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

large a family at that early age. These and other anomalies 
in the table, therefore, compel us to seek for the principle 
of its construction ; and when we discover the purpose which 
it was designed to serve, we have at once the key to its 
explanation. 

In the after-history of the Hebrew nation we find that it 
was divided into twelve tribes, and that the tribes were ranged 
under different families. The tribes, of course, took their 
names from the twelve sons of Jacob, with the exception that, 
as we shall see in a later part of this evening's lecture, Ma- 
nasseh and Ephraim, the sons of Joseph, were reckoned as 
heads of tribes, precisely as if they had been the sons and 
not merely the grandsons of Jacob. In each tribe, again, 
the families into which it was divided took their names from 
the grandsons of Jacob, and in some cases — that of the tribe 
of Asher, for example — from those of his great-grandsons. 
Now, the object of this list is to give the names of the heads 
of the tribes, and those of the subordinate families of each 
tribe in the nation. Hence it belongs to a date slightly later 
than that of the removal to Egypt, and is inserted here as 
the most convenient place for its preser\^ation, although it 
undoubtedly contains the names of some who were not born 
at the time of the emigration from Canaan, and who are here 
said to have gone down into Egypt, simply on the principle 
that, to use the language of the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, ^' they were then in the loins of their fathers." 
This may seem to some as if it were merely a violent cutting 
of the knot, rather than a patient untying of it; but, as one 
has said, " There is a marked difference in certain respects 
between genealogical and historical records, and particularly 
in the mode of clubbing together parent and offspring, or 
of giving sway to some regulating principle."* They were 

* Fairbairn's ''Imperial Bible Dictionary," art. Jacob. 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 155 

very often constructed on some artificial principle. We can- 
not read the table with which Matthew begins his gospel 
without remarking that there other things are made to bend 
to the securing of fourteen generations between each of the 
different landing-places in the document. Now, in the list 
more immediately before us, the principle of construction was 
to include all the heads of families in the different tribes, 
whether these were grandsons or great-grandsons of Jacob, 
and whether they were born in Egypt or not ; for as one is 
an American citizen who is born of American parents any- 
where, so these were Hebrews though they were born in 
Egypt. Dean Payne Smith has put the matter very clearly 
and succinctly in these sentences: *^This document is one 
that would be of the highest importance to the Israelites 
when taking possession of Canaan, being, as it were, their 
title-deed to the land. Accordingly we find that it is drawn 
up in legal manner, representing as sons some who were re- 
ally grandsons, but who took as heads of families the place 
usually held by sons. We next find that it represents them 
all as born in Canaan, not in a natural sense, but as the 
rightful heirs of the country. Technically every head of a 
family was born in Canaan, and thus the danger was obviated 
of an objection to the possession of this rank being accorded 
to one born in Egypt." "^ 

But there are difficulties also as to the numbers. The 
classification is arranged under the headings of Jacob's wives; 
and it is said, verse fifteenth, " These be the sons of Leah, 
which she bare unto Jacob in Padan-aram, with his daughter 
Dinah : all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty 
and three." But when we add up the several items we get 
only thirty-two. This sets us to a closer inspection of the 

* Ellicott's '' Old Testament Commentary for English Readers," vol. i., 
p. 159. 



156 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

wording of the document, and looking back to verse eighth we 
find, " These are the names of the children of Israel, which 
came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons." So, however strange 
it may seem, we must include Jacob himself in the enumer- 
ation, and that makes thirty-three. 

Again, in the twenty-sixth verse, it is said, "All the souls 
that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, 
besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore and 
six ; and the sons of Joseph, which were borne him in Egypt, 
were two souls : all the souls of the house of Jacob, v;hich 
came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.'*' Now, how shall 
w^e explain these statements ? If we add the totals for the 
sons of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah as they are here 
given, we get the sum of seventy. But how shall we make 
out that of sixty-six ? Thus : drop the name of Jacob from 
the sons of Leah and you have, including Dinah, thirty-two. 
Drop also Joseph and his two sons from the list of Rachel's 
descendants and you have for them eleven. This will give 
32-1-16 + 11-1-7=66. Then, if to these sixty -six thus ac- 
counted for you add Jacob, Joseph and his two sons — four — 
you have seventy, the second number specified. 

But some of you may remember that Stephen, in his ad- 
dress before the Jewish council, spoke thus: "Then sent 
Joseph and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kin- 
dred, threescore and fifteen souls." How now shall we ex- 
plain that discrepancy ? Some have accounted for it by sup- 
posing that Stephen quoted from the Septuagint, which in- 
cludes in its genealogical list five descendants of Joseph who 
are not mentioned in the Hebrew text ; while others have 
held that the eloquent deacon proceeded on the principle of 
excluding from the list all who were not actually born in 
Canaan, and including the eleven wives of Jacob's sons. 
Thus, Dr. Lee in his " Lectures on Inspiration," says, " Mo- 
ses tells us how many Jacob and his seed amounted to, omit- 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 157 

ting his sons' wives. Stephen tells us how many they were 
that Joseph called into Egypt. Some, therefore, in the list 
of Moses must be left out of the number given by Stephen. 
Joseph and his two sons could not be said to be called into 
Egypt, still less could Hezron and Hamul, the sons of Pharez, 
who were not yet born. Besides, Jacob, too, miust be consid- 
ered apart. Hence six persons are to be deducted from the 
number of Moses, in order to find those who are reckoned 
by Stephen, and sixty-four only are common to both. Add 
now the eleven wives of the sons of Jacob, and we get the 
number, seventy-five, given by Stephen.''* This seems plau- 
sible, but the plausibility disappears when we go a little into 
detail ; for if we must deduct Hezron and Hamul as not then 
born, plainly we must deduct, for the same reason, some of 
the sons of Benjamin, and probably also the grandsons of 
Asher ; so that, in spite of its ingenuity, this explanation of 
Dr. Lee's must be given up, and we fall back on the other 
as entirely natural and satisfactory, namely, that Stephen, 
speaking to Hellenistic Jews, was quoting from the Greek 
version of the Old Testament current in his day, which in- 
cluded five descendants of Joseph, to wit, three grandsons 
and two great-grandsons, who are not spoken of in the He- 
brew text, and only the sticklers for a mechanical and utter- 
ly untenable theory of inspiration will be troubled by such 
an explanation. 

But, leaving now these matters of detail and difficulty, let 
us take up the thread of the history at the point at which we 
left it in our last discourse. Jacob resided in the land of 
Goshen for seventeen years, and as he removed from Ca- 
naan to Egypt in the second year of the great famine, he 
must have seen the land in its usual productiveness for 
twelve years. How it fared with. Joseph all that while the 

* " Donellan Lectures on Inspiration," p. 454. 



iS8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

narrative does not inform us, but there seems to be little 
doubt that he retained his exalted position in the country, 
even though the immediate occasion for his special services 
had passed away. He was still a great lord in the land, and 
his kinsmen were sharers in his prosperity, and continued to 
dwell in the district of Goshen. Only three incidents be- 
longing to these seventeen years are recorded, and all of 
them cluster about the close of Jacob's life; but, whatever 
else may have marked the tenor of this last seventh portion 
of the pilgrimage of the aged patriarch — the Sabbath of his 
life, as we may call it — w^e may be sure that it was brighten- 
ed for him by the fellowship, and lightened for him by the 
kindness of his beloved Joseph. Indeed, two out of the 
three incidents to which I have referred both illustrate and 
confirm that assertion. 

The first was an interview between Jacob and Joseph 
themselves alone. The old man felt that his days on earth 
were drawing to a close. The frailties of age were upon him. 
He does not appear, indeed, to have been confined constant- 
ly to his couch, but his thoughts were much on his departure, 
and, in the course of nature, he knew that he must soon "be 
gathered to his fathers." But he saw no indication of the 
immediate return of his family to Canaan. Joseph most evi- 
dently had still work to do in Egypt, and Jacob's other sons 
were too comfortable under the shield of their brother's pro- 
tection to desire to go elsewhere. As far, therefore, as he 
could forecast, Jacob felt that he should die in Egypt, and 
he began to ponder on the effect which that event would 
have upon the faith and character of his descendants. If 
he were to be buried in that land without giving any testi- 
mony to God's covenant, which had pledged Jehovah to 
grant Canaan to his posterity, it would seem like throwing 
up his claim to the Land of Promise altogether, and might 
reconcile his descendants to remain forever where they then 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 159 

were. But from that Jacob revolted with all his heart. Ac- 
cordingly, he sent specially for Joseph, on whose truth and 
loyalty he could implicitly depend, and required him to 
promise, with an oath administered after the fashion of his 
fathers, that his remains should not be buried in Egypt, but 
should be laid in the Cave of Machpelah, beside those of 
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and his own Leah. 
This request was thus rooted in something deeper than 
the merely natural desire of a man to have his body laid be- 
side those of his nearest kindred. Under the New Testa- 
ment dispensation, indeed, we have learned that it makes no 
matter where our bodies are buried, for by his brief occu- 
pancy of the tomb of Joseph the Lord Jesus Christ has con- 
secrated the whole earth as a cemetery for his people; and 
by his resurrection from the grave he has given us the as- 
surance that they that sleep in him, wheresoever their rest- 
ing-places are, shall hear his voice at the last great day, and 
shall come forth in spiritual and incorruptible forms to meet 
him in the skies. The mere locality of our grave, therefore, 
is of comparatively small importance, whether we are laid 
away under the arctic snows, like the brave explorers who 
accompanied the dauntless Franklin, or beneath the shade 
of tropical shrubs on the rim of the Dark Continent, like 
those missionary martyrs who by their sepulchres have taken 
possession of the Machpelah in that new Land of Promise, 
or in the dark, unfathomed caves of ocean, with the white 
foam of the waves for our shroud, and the whistling of the 
winds for our requiem. It is all one to the Christian where 
his body is laid. And yet even the Christian has the natural 
desire to be laid beside his kindred; so that in all our cem- 
eteries we have family lots, and in many of our old country 
homesteads we come yet upon the quiet and secluded en- 
closure where the ashes of the first settlers and those of 
their successors lie. But Jacob's desire that his body should 



i6o Joseph the Prime-minister. 

be laid in Machpel^h had a deeper root than nature. The 
land of Canaan was his by God's covenant. He had not 
yet obtained it. For aught that he could see, he was to die 
without entering on its possession; but even in his death he 
would show that he still believed that his children would 
have its ownership,. and therefore he made Joseph swear 
that he would bury him in the sepulchre of his fathers. 

Nor was this all. He wanted his sons and his descend- 
ants to know that Egypt was not their rest. He desired to 
fix their minds on Canaan, and to fan in their hearts the de- 
sire to return thither when God should open up the way. 
There was to be nothing, as far as he was concerned, to an- 
chor them in Egypt, but everything to incite them to go 
back to Palestine ; therefore, knowing how much there is in 
the sepulchres of our fathers to gather round them interest 
and enthusiasm, and to evoke the desire on our part to be in 
their immediate neighborhood, he said to Joseph, " Bury me 
in the burying-place of my fathers." 

Joseph took the required oath, saying, '' I will do as thou 
hast said ;" and thereupon the anxiety of his father was en- 
tirely removed. And we read that '' Israel bowed himself 
upon the bed's head." But the Septuagint translation gives 
the phrase thus, " Israel bowed himself, or worshipped, upon 
the top of his staff;" and the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews quotes it, according to our authorized version, thus, 
"Jacob worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff." It 
may appear strange that two such diverse translations should 
be given of the same Hebrew word, but an illustration will 
make it plain. Originally the Hebrew was written without 
vowels, and these were supplied by the reader. Latterly, 
however, and indeed centuries after the Christian era began, 
the Masoretes supplied the vovv^els, putting them in the shape 
of points under and in the consonants, very much as they 
are put in our modern phonographic short-hand. The same 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. i6i 

consonants, therefore, according as they were differently vow- 
elled, might mean different things; just as in our own lan- 
guage the same consonants written in short-hand will signify 
trouble, or terrible, or treble, according as they are pointed. 
So here the same word in Hebrew vowelled one way means 
bed, and vowelled another means staff; and as the Greek 
translators were nearer the era when Hebrew was a spoken 
language, we prefer their rendering as the better. 

But even with that translation, what is the meaning of the 
clause ? It has been commonly interpreted as a manifesta- 
tion of Jacob's thankfulness to God for the ready acquies- 
cence of Joseph in his request, and thus understood it har- 
monizes well with the whole surroundings of the story and 
with all that we know of Jacob's own character. But Mr. 
Stuart Poole, in an article in the Co7itemporary Review for 
March, 1879, already referred to by me in these discourses,^ 
has suggested another, and perhaps a better explanation. 
He says, speaking of the conformity of the narrative of Jo- 
seph to the Egypt of the time as revealed by the monuments, 
"Two circumstances bring us very near Egyptian official 
usages. 'By the life of Pharaoh' is used as a strong assev- 
eration by Joseph ;t and when he has sworn to his father, 
after the Hebrew manner, that he wall not bury him in Egypt, 
then Israel * bowed himself upon the head of his staff.'" 
Both the expression " by the life of Pharaoh " and the cus- 
tom of bowing upon the staff of an officer are traced by M. 
Chabas in his interesting essays on Egyptian judicial pro- 
ceedings, where he cites the following passage describing the 
taking of an oath by a witness in Thebes : " ' He made a life 
of the royal lord, striking his nose and his ears, and placing 
himself on the head of the staff' — the ordinary oath w^hen 
the witness bowed himself on the magistrate's staff of office. 

* See p. 38. t Gen. xliii., 15, 16. 



1 62 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

He well remarks that this explains the passage in Genesis 
quoted above, as a recognition by Jacob of his son's author- 
ity/' According to this interesting interpretation, then, the 
staff here is not that of Jacob, but the official staff of Joseph, 
and Jacob shows his gratitude to his son by rendering to 
him, after the Egyptian manner, the respect which he was 
accustomed to receive from the subjects of Pharaoh. This, 
too, is a simple, natural, and every way appropriate exer- 
cise for Jacob in the circumstances ; and if I must choose be- 
tween the two explanations, I express my preference for the 
second, as harmonizing the Hebrew with the Septuagint, 
the Old Testament with the New, and both with the com- 
mon custom of ancient Egypt. 

The second incident which is recorded as having occurred 
shortly before the death of Jacob, is an interview between 
him and Joseph, in the presence of Ephraim and Manasseh, 
and having special reference to them. In response to a mes- 
sage telling him that his father was sick, Joseph, accompa- 
nied by his two sons, hastened to Jacob's bedside. When 
the old man heard of his approach he summoned all his 
strength, and, rising to a sitting posture, prepared himself for 
the discharge of an important duty. After the usual greet- 
ing, of which here we have no account, the venerable patri- 
arch, looking far back in his history to God's two appearances 
to him at Bethel, repeated to Joseph the substance of the 
promises which the Lord had there made to him, and for- 
mally adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, put- 
ting them, so far as tribal prominence was concerned, on an 
equality with Joseph's own brethren. Thus he spoke : "Now 
thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto 
thee in the land of Egypt, before I came unto thee into Egypt, 
are mine ; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. And 
thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, 
and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 163 

inheritance/' Then there comes into the narrative a touch 
of nature which is exceedingly affecting. He has been put- 
ting Ephraim and Manasseh into the birthright place for- 
feited by Reuben, because to them, as the sons of Joseph 
who was the first-born of Rachel, after its forfeiture by the 
first-born of Leah, it rightfully belonged; and that suggests 
to him his first, his early, his constant, his supreme love for 
Rachel, so that he goes on to speak of her — of the time, 
place, and manner of her death, and of her lonely grave, pre- 
cisely as if the incidents had happened only a short while 
before. It is so like an old man in the apparent abruptness 
of the transition from his grandsons to Rachel, and in the 
fond circumstantiality of his references to his well-beloved ; 
and those who have had most to do with the aged will be 
the first to recognize the truthful naturalness of the whole 
description. 

But now, for the first time, the dying man, whose eyes were 
dimmed with years, perceived that Joseph was not alone. 
There were two others v/ith him, but he could not clearly 
identify them, and he asked, " Who are these .'*" This led to 
Joseph's introduction of his sons to their grandfather, who 
instantly said, " Bring them, I pray thee, to me, and I will 
bless them ;" and when he had kissed and embraced them he 
said to their father, in a parenthesis of grateful love, "I had 
not thought to see thy face : and, lo, God hath shewed me 
also thy seed." Then, when they were kneeling before him, 
Manasseh the elder on the left, where Jacob's right hand 
would come most naturally to his head, and Ephraim the 
younger on the right, where Jacob's left hand would most 
naturally find his head, the old man crossed his hands, so 
that his right hand was on the head of Ephraim and his 
left on that of Manasseh, and in this attitude he repeated 
these beautiful words: "God, before whom my fathers Abra- 
ham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life 



1 64 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

long unto this clay, the Angel which redeemed me from 
all evil, bless the lads ; and let my name be named on them, 
and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let 
them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth." It 
was the experience of a lifetime condensed into a sentence 
and breathed into a prayer. The home of Beersheba, the 
vision of Bethel, the protection experienced in Padan-aram, 
the blessing of the new name from the angel that wrestled 
with him at Peniel — all are brought into review before us as 
we hear these words, and it seems as if all were said that 
could be said by Jacob when he exclaimed, " The Angel which 
redeemed me " — no created angel that, but the only-begotten 
son who has redeemed us also, so that across the chasm of 
milleniums our hands meet those of Jacob, as we cling to 
Christ, and hear him saying, " the Angel which redeemed me 
from all evil, bless the lads." 

But Joseph was slightly discomposed by the position of 
his father's hands. He recognized that, like Isaac in similar 
circumstances, Jacob was speaking under special divine guid- 
ance, and he would make sure that there was no mistake. 
So he drew his father's attention to what he had done, and 
received for answer, "I know it, my son, I know it," with 
which he was content ; for to both the boys Jacob had spo- 
ken as representing their descendants, in words which truth- 
fully describe the relative position of the tribes of Ephraim 
and Manasseh in after days to each other and to the rest of 
the nation. 

Then, this interesting duty done, Jacob said to his son, 
" Behold, I die ; but God shall be with you, and bring you 
again unto the land of your fathers ;" and to give him yet an- 
other proof of the firmness of his faith in the divine promise, 
he added, *^ Moreover I have given to thee one portion above 
thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite 
with my sword and with my bow." The word here rendered 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 165 

*^ portion" is " Shechem," and that, together with the decla- 
ration of the fourth Evangelist, that Jacob's well was "near 
to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph,'' 
fixes the locality near the modern Nablus, in that valley 
which is described by modern travellers as being the most 
beautiful place in all Palestine. But when did Jacob take 
that out of the hands of the Amorite with his sword and with 
his bow? Some have replied that it was when Simeon and 
Levi treacherously warred with the men of Shechem ; but 
that can hardly be, for Jacob was grievously ashamed of their 
conduct, and emphatically condemned it, so that here he 
cannot be understood as appropriating and endorsing it. 
But there is no mention of any other strife with sword and 
bow in which Jacob was personally engaged, and therefore 
the common opinion now is, that he here spoke prophetical- 
ly, and already saw the time in vision when his tribal de- 
scendants should conquer the Land of Promise, and Joseph's 
body should be laid in that portion of ground which, though 
it was his by inheritance, had to be taken again by Israel 
out of the hands of the Canaanites by force. 

Thus far for the history. Now let us see what we can 
learn from it, that our exposition may be not merely for the 
satisfaction of the intellect, but also for the profit of the life. 
I mention only three things. 

First, how delightful it is to see the intercourse between 
an aged father and a full-grown son, when it is what it ought 
to be on both sides. Joseph's greatest ambition was to pro- 
mote Jacob's welfare, and Jacob's heart rejoiced in every 
honor which Joseph enjoyed. The Grand Vizier of Egypt 
held himself at the proper call of his father, but knowing 
how much he was engaged with public and pressing affairs 
his father made demands upon him only for necessary things. 
Joseph brought Jacob to Egypt that he might nourish him, 
and he thought it no hardship to have to provide for him as 






% 



1 66 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

long as it was necessary to do so; but Jacob, having brought 
his flocks and herds with him, would not need such provis- 
ion after the famine ended, and would rejoice in his latest 
years in a virtual independence. Joseph placed his father 
near himself, that he might easily and often visit him ; but 
Jacob still kept up his own house, that he might not inter- 
fere with the comfort of others, and they might not mar the 
peace of his own heart. All this is very interesting, and not 
without its suggestive hints to us. It tells those among us 
who have to provide for aged parents to regard that as one 
of the highest honors of their lives. An aged mother or a 
venerable father is the greatest treasure that a son or a 
daughter can possess; and far from counting their support 
a burden, their children should regard it as a pleasure. But 
even where no pecuniary support is needed by them, their 
^ sons ought to go and see them often, and cheer them by 
their conversation and fellowship. The aged are lonely. 
They have survived most of the companions of their youth 
and middle age, and depend for many of their joys upon 
those younger than themselves, especially upon their sons 
and daughters. So go and see your father and mother when 
you can ; let nothing, if possible, keep you away when they 
send for you, and when they are sick your fitting place is by 
their bed. Sacredly cherish their requests, and take upon 
you every responsibility that will ease their hearts. They 
will not be with you long ; and when you lay their ashes 
in the dust, you will not be upbraided by the reproach of 
conscience that you did not honor and nourish them as 
you ought to have done. 

But while in this fellowship there is an obligation resting 
on the son or daughter, there is a corresponding one devolv- 
ing on the parent. He is to be considerate also of his son's 
or daughter's circumstances and duties, and is to remember 
that with advancing years on both sides the relative position 






Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 167 

of the one to the other has considerably changed. He can- 
not expect that he can be to his son or daughter as he was 
in the days of their minority^ or that they can be to him 
precisely as they were when they were children ; and he must 
not murmur if other duties keep them from being with him 
as much as otherwise they w^ould desire. The words of 
Lawson here are exceedingly judicious, and may be com- 
mended to the attentive consideration of those to whom 
they refer : " Children should obey and honor their parents 
as long as they live. But parents are not to expect the same 
degree of obedience from them in every part of life, bBr 
cause, in the progress of reason and of human affairs, chil- ^ 
dren are entitled to new privileges, and laid under obliga- ^T^ 
tions to new duties. They have a right, when they come to 
the years of maturity, to judge for themselves concerning * 
matters in which they were formerly bound to acquiesce in j" 
the judgment of their parents. They enter into new con- 
nections, the duties of which are not less sacred than those 
which they owed to their parents;''^ and nothing inconsistent 
with the performance of the duties of these relationships 
ought to be required even by their parents. These are val- 
uable principles, and if they were better understood among 
us there might be fewer family feuds or domestic misunder- 
standings. 

Second, let us learn from this narrative that if we have 
any important business to transact before we die w^e should 
set about it betimes, and not leave it to be done in haste at 
the last. Jacob's end was drawing near, and he sent for Jo- 
seph, as it w^ould appear, before even his last illness had set 
in, and ere yet he was laid upon his couch, to give him com- 
mandment concerning his burial. Now this may suggest, to 

* " Lectures on the History of Joseph," by George Lawson, D.D., 
P-390. 



1 68 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

those who have family arrangements to make, that they should 
not defer the making of them until they come to be in the 
article of death, but should settle their affairs while yet they 
are in full health, in the possession of a sound mind, and in 
calm, unbiassed spirit. If, for example, a will has to be 
made by a man — and every man, if he have anything to 
leave, both for his own sake and for the sake of those who 
are most nearly related to him, should make a will — why 
should he postpone the making of it until he come to die? 
It will not bring death any sooner if he should make it at 
once, and it may prevent many evils if it is made now. 
Then, if God should greatly prosper him in future years, 
and should thus alter his circumstances, let him destroy the 
former will and make another, lest terrible injustice and hard- 
ship be done to the survivors by putting them back into a 
scale of living to which they have not for long been accus- 
tomed, and leaving them with a pitiful provision instead of 
an ample sustenance such as could easily have been pro- 
vided. I have known cases of great suffering just from this 
cause. Let every man keep his affairs well in hand, so that 
those around him shall have to mourn only his departure 
when he dies, and shall have no cause to blame him for 
want of thought for his nearest and his dearest relations. 
If there is anything that you feel you ought to do in the way 
of settling your affairs, so as to secure peace and comfort 
among the members of your family when you die, do it at 
once, for the uncertainty of life is proverbial, and you know 
not what a day may bring forth. You cannot read the news- 
papers for a week together without discovering that many 
unseemly squabbles over the division of property might have 
been prevented if those who in business were so energetic in 
the making of money had possessed only the foresight to ar- 
range calmly, and in circumstances in which there could be 
no ground for the insinuation either of undue influence on 



Joseph's Two Visits to his Aged Father. 169 

the part of others, or of incompetence on their own, for its 
division. If there is anything you feel impelled to say or do 
before you die, then say or do it now, and the older you are, 
let the now be only the more emphatic. 

Finally, what a happy thing it is to have faith when we 
come to die. Jacob says, '^ I die^ but C^^ shall be with you.*' 
That was his legacy to Joseph and his other sons. He had 
no misgivings about them. They were in Egypt, no doubt, 
and he saw no present prospect of their return to Canaan, 
but he was sure that God would arrange all that, and he felt 
so confident about it that he gave commandment concern- 
ing his burial. He died away from the Land of Promise, but 
he "greeted it from afar," and on his death-bed reaffirmed 
his faith that his children would possess it. " God will be a 
with you ;" yes, and on the other side of it " He would be 2> 

with God," in the true land of promise, the Canaan of the > 

skies ; for that, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrew^s ^^ 
assures us, was at the moment in his desire. But what was 
seen by him only through type becomes a direct object of 
faith to the Christian. Dying he leaves the Lord with his 
friends, and goes himself to be with the Lord. So he has \ 
calmness and peace like that which Michael Bruce has ex- ^ 
pressed in the beautiful hymn with which every Scotchman 
is familiar, as forming the last in the old Psalmody of his 
fatherland: 



n 



'*The hour of my departure's come, 
I hear the voice that calls me home. 
At last, O Lord, let trouble cease, 
And let thy servant die in peace. 

"The race appointed I have run; 
The combat's o'er, the prize is won ; 
And now my witness is on high, 
And now my record 's in the sky. 
8 



t 



170 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

"Not in mine innocence I trust, 
I bow before thee in the dust; 
And through my Saviour's blood alone 
I look for mercy at thy throne. 

"I leave the world without a tear, 
Save for the friends I held so dear. 
To heal their sorrows, Lord, descend, 
And to the friendless prove a friend." 

Oh, for such faith in Christ through life, that we may have 
this calmness and peace in the hour of our departure. Amen. 



XII. 

JACOB'S DYING PROPHECIES. 
Gen. xlix., 1-27. 

THE last of the three incidents in the life of Jacob which 
are recorded as having place between the migration 
of that patriarch to Egypt and his death, is the assembling 
by him of his sons around his death-bed, that he might tell 
them what should befall their posterity in the latter days. 
It is commonly spoken of as his "blessing" of his children, 
but it would be more accurately described as his prophetic 
forecast of the future character, position, and history of each 
of the tribes which were to be named after each of his sons. 
The aged patriarch speaks throughout as one gifted for the 
occasion with divine inspiration. His words are not mere 
wishes, nor are they simple prayers ; but they are actual pre- 
dictions. He addresses his sons not merely as one who could 
say like the Highland chieftain, ^ ^X 



**'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, "* 

And coming events cast their shadows before,"* [r 

but as the heir of the covenant blessing to whom a special 
revelation had been made, and who had received along with 
that the inspiration which was needed for its correct trans- 
mission to those for whom it was intended. Accordingly, by 
such as deny the possibility of prophecy, it has been indus- 
triously asserted that these patriarchal predictions must have 

* Thomas Campbell. 



^ 
F 



172 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

been written after the occurrence of the things which they 
foretell, and that they are here fictitiously put into the mouth 
of Jacob. The very presence of such vaticinations in the doc- 
ument has been held by many as proving that it belongs to 
the date of David or of Solomon, and that it was written by 
one looking back upon the past, rather than spoken by one 
who was foretelling the future. Now it would be quite out 
of place to enter here on an elaborate reply to the a priori 
objection that prophecy is impossible, since that is only an 
inference from the assertion that all miracles are impossible, 
and such an assertion, as we have elsewhere shown,"^ amounts 
to a virtual denial of the personal existence of God himself. 
But in rebuttal of the affirmation that these predictions 
must have been written after the occurrence of the things 
which they foretell, we may point to the fact that in the por- 
tion which refers to Levi, no mention is made of the conse- 
cration of the members of his tribe to the special service of 
God ; and it is utterly inconceivable that one writing at any 
date subsequent to the erection of the Tabernacle should 
have passed that peculiar office of the Levites in silence. 
This prophecy, therefore, must have been given before the 
Exodus, and if that be so, no more fitting occasion for its 
enunciation can be suggested than that on which it is here 
said to have been uttered. Again, in the oracle which is 
addressed to Judah, there is, as we shall presently see, a ref- 
erence to the time of the appearance of the Messiah on the 
earth ; and even if the date of its production be put as far 
down as David's day, nothing would be gained in the inter- 
ests of rationalism by that, since a difference of a few hun- 
dred years in the date of a prediction, which is still acknowl- 
edofed to be a thousand vears in advance of what we shall 



* See "The Gospel Miracles in their Relation to Christ and Christi- 
anity," by W. M. Taylor, D.D. Lecture I. 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 173 

show to have been its fulfilment, does not at all invalidate 
the supernatural character of the prophecy. We take this 
chapter, therefore, as we find it, and we regard it as being 
what it purports to be, the dying utterance of the last of the 
three great patriarchs. 

Now, in carefully considering the separate oracles of which 
it consists, we find two things specially characteristic of the 
whole series. In the first place the tribes are regarded as 
individuals, and the future of each is indicated in an address 
to its head. Just as, among ourselves, a nation is often 
viewed as a person, and its history as a lifetime, having its 
birth, infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death, so each 
tribe here is personified in, or represented by, its progenitor, 
and his life is spoken of as continued or prolonged in the 
existence of his posterity. In the second place, each pre- 
diction is rooted in the character or name of the individual 
addressed, and is shown to be a development of some germ 
which had already manifested its existence in him. In the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms we find fixity of type main- 
tained by different species through long series of years, and 
the same thing may be observed in the several tribes of men. 
Here and there we may come upon individual exceptions, 
but in the main the principle of heredity holds good, and 
the descendants of the same progenitor have the qualities of 
their sire. The Gauls of modern times have many of the 
same characteristics which Paul attributes to the Galatians 
of old, and they both come from the same stock. Hence, 
Jacob here unconsciously proceeds on what is now recognized 
as a law of nature, while at the same time his allusions to 
the individual characters and actions of his sons as they 
stood round his bed, must have had a particularly wholesome 
effect upon themselves, leading some of them to the deepest 
penitence, and stimulating others to the devoutest praise. 

We attempt no description of the scene. That which is 



174 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

not depicted is often, thereby, only the more effectively de- 
lineated. We leave you therefore to imagine the picture for 
yourselves, while we go on to give in the briefest form a clear 
presentation of the meaning of the different oracles. 
Jacob begins with Reuben, whom he thus addresses: 

" Reuben, my firstborn, thou. 
My might, and the beginning of my strength ; 
The excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. 
Boiling over like water, thou shalt not excel ; 
Because thou wentest up to thy father's bed ; 
Then defiledst thou it : he went up to my couch." 

Here there is a reference to the forfeiture of the birthright 
by Reuben, and the sin of which that was the punishment. 
Its commission is traced to the geyser-like quality of Reuben's 
character, which burst forth intermittently, now boiling up in 
a sudden surge, and now receding out of sight. Of this pe- 
culiarity we have instances in his spasmodic and therefore 
unsuccessful attempt to save the life of Joseph by getting him 
put into the pit, and then leaving him, and in his altogether 
extravagant offer to allow his two sons to be slain if he did 
not bring Benjamin safely back. Now, such a temperament 
never achieves excellence. It lacks perseverance and steadi- 
ness of application, and Jacob affirms that Reuben's posteri- 
ty, taking after their father in this respect, would never rise 
to any eminence in the nation. Nor did they ; for it is re- 
markable that no one of the Judges belonged to this tribe. 
It gave no great captain to the armies of Israel, and no name 
to the goodly fellowship of the prophets in the land. In the 
song of Deborah it is mentioned with disapprobation among 
those who came not up to the help of the Lord ; and the un- 
reliableness of its members may be referred to in the words, 
" For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of 
heart. Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds to hear the 
bleatinors of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 175 

were great searchings of heart.'' So it passes down into the 
region that is below mediocrity, and becomes the type of 
superficial and short-lived impulse that dies away into inac- 
tivity and inefficiency. 

Simeon and Levi come next. They are addressed togeth- 
er as having been the actors in that attack upon the She- 
chemites which overwhelmed Jacob with shame, and to which 
there is unmistakable allusion in these scorching words: 

" Simeon and Levi are brethren ; 
Instruments of cruelty are their swords. 

my soul, come not thou into their secret ; 

Unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united; 
For in their anger they slew a man, 
And in their selfwill they houghed oxen. 
Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; 
And their wrath, for it was cruel : 

1 will divide them in Jacob, 
And scatter them in Israel." 

They had conspired with each other for evil, and as a pun* 
ishment they would be scattered over the Land of Promise. 
As Bishop Andrewes has quaintly put it, "Their fault was a 
bad union; their punishment is a just division. Their fault 
was Miand-in-hand;' they were too near; their punishment 
is, they shall be set far enough asunder. So whom the devil 
hath joined God puts insunder, and a righteous thing it is it 
should be so." Now observe the fulfilment. After the con- 
quest of Canaan the Simeonites were not important enough 
to have an allotment of their owUj'^and had a portion out of 
the inheritance of Judah; and in the subsequent history of 
the nation it is difficult to discover even the name of Sim- 
eon, or any trace of influence exerted by the tribe. Of the 
Levites we read again and again that they had " no inher- 

* Josh, xix., 1-9. 



176 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

itance save God," and that their dwellings were assigned 
them in different cities far from each other, and scattered 
over the territories of all the tribes. But there is this strik- 
ing feature in their case, namely, that what in Jacob's proph- 
ecy was a curse, was turned, by the noble conduct of Moses 
and the splendid loyalty of the Levites in a time of peril, 
into a blessing. So that, while the letter of the prediction 
was fulfilled, the penitence of the Levites had power, through 
the grace of God, to change the spirit of it into a benedic- 
tion. The truth of the prophecy was kept, but in the way 
of blessing rather than of punishment; and few things are 
more interesting and suggestive in this regard than the com- 
parison of these words of Jacob concerning Levi with the 
blessing which Moses pronounced upon the same tribe. 
Next comes Judah, to whom Jacob said, 

"Judah, thou, thy brethren shall praise thee: 
Thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies ; 
Thy father's children shall bow down before thee. 
Judah is a lion's whelp; 
From the prey, my son, thou ait gone up : 
lie stooped down, he crouched as a lion, 
And as an old lion ; who shall rouse him up ? 
A sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor a law-giver from between his feet, 
Until Shiloh come; 

And unto him shall be the obedience of the peoples. 
Binding his foal unto the vine, 
And his ass's colt unto the choice vine ; 
He washed his garments in wine, 
And his clothes in the blood of grapes : 
His eyes shall be red with wine, 
And his teeth white with milk." 

The first words of this oracle refer to the derivation of the 
name Judah, which signifies praise, and declare that he shall 
be the object of reverence among his brethren. The next 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 177 

verses depict his supremacy among the tribes as giving to 
them a king, and inaugurating a government which, in one 
form or other, should exist until the coming of Shiloh ; v^'hile 
the closing verses describe the rich beauty and luxuriant 
productiveness of his tribal inheritance in the land of Ca- 
naan. But naturally we are most deeply interested in the 
portion which refers to the coming of Shiloh. Now here it 
is to be remarked that the translation which we have given 
is that which the majority of Hebrew scholars have sanc- 
tioned. The variation suggested by some, ^' until he come 
to Shiloh,'' finds little favor either on grammatical or histori- 
cal grounds, and has been very generally discarded. The 
term Shiloh has been variously understood, but now the best 
scholars are divided between these two significations, *^the 
Peaceful " and " He whose it is "—the one referring to the 
character of the Messiah, and the other to his right to the 
sceptre of Judah ; but as the latter would require a con- 
siderable change in the Hebrew word, involving even the 
leaving out of one of its letters, I prefer the former, corre- 
sponding as it does with Isaiah's designation of the coming 
deliverer as "the prince of Peace." Now this prediction of 
Jacob is a distinct step forward in the march of prophecy. 
First, Messiah was to be the seed of the woman ; then of the 
family of Shem, then of the seed of Abraham; then Jacob 
was designated as his progenitor, and now Judah. But along 
with that indication of his tribal ancestry we have now also 
this description of his character, the Peaceful, and this iden- 
tification of the time of his appearance, namely, just before 
the sceptre shall depart from Judah. Now^ of these the first 
two need not detain us long, for " it is evident that our Lord 
sprang out of Judah -^'^^ and every one recognizes the fitness 
of Shiloh, the peaceful, as the name of him on whose birth- 

* Hebrews vii., 14. 
8^ 



178 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

night the heavenly host sang "Glory to God in the highest, 
peace on earth, good-will to men." Eut more difficulty has 
been felt about the date, as here described, and yet even 
here we have.no need to shrink from the strictest scrutiny. 
I cannot put the truth about it into briefer or clearer sen- 
tences than the following, taken from a valuable work by one 
of the office-bearers of this church :^ "The figures used de- 
note a continued national existence on the part of Judah. . . . 
The sceptre is emblematic of an actual executive authority, 
whether king or magistrate, bearing sway over some definite 
territory or country, rather than over a scattered race. . . . 
The law-giver denotes that other indispensable adjunct to a 
real nation, namely, the possession of its own legal courts 
and institutions. [Now] over against this ancient prophecy 
stands this fact in history, that, with the brief exception of 
the stay in Babylon, . . . the tribe of Judah maintained its 
specific existence from the beginning of Hebrew history 
down to the overthrow by Titus, a nation in the strict sense 
of the term where that is used in distinction from a race or 
people.'^ Under the Persians; in the years of its indepen- 
dence after its successful conflict with a portion of the empire 
left by Alexander; and under the Roman power, the Jewish 
nation preserved these badges of its existence, and lost them 
only after that memorable siege which Josephus has de- 
scribed, when Jerusalem was destroyed and the people scat- 
tered over all lands. Since then the Jews have been a race 
or people, but not a nation, the sceptre has departed, the 
law-giver has gone, because Shiloh has come; and so in this 
prophecy, thus understood, we have a wonderful identification 
of Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah, for, as the annota- 
tion on Genesis in the " Speaker's Commentary " has said, 

* ''The Great Argument," by W. H. Thomson, M.D., LL.D., pp. 104, 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 179 

"All Jewish antiquity referred this prophecy to Messiah," 
and only since they have been pressed by the argument 
that, if that be so, the time appointed for his coming must 
have passed, have the Jews taken to interpreting the pas- 
sage of David and others. Here, therefore, we feel as former- 
ly we did when expounding the seventy sevens of Daniel.^ 
We survey an arch of prophecy that spans eighteen hun- 
dred years, and as we behold the correspondence between 
the event and the prediction we ask who built that arch ? 
But if the Shiloh has come, shall we not render to him our 
obedience ? For the last clause of this verse is, " to him 
shall be the obedience of the peoples," that is, the nations of 
the earth; and we have here the repetition in another form 
of the promise to Abraham, that "in him and in his seed all 
the nations of the earth should be blessed." The Messiah 
was to be of the Jews, yet not for the Jews alone, but for 
men as men ; and the day is coming w-hen "all nations shall 
adore him, and his praise all people sing." 

But we must hasten. Zebulon comes next, and to him 
Jacob says, 

** Zebulon shall dwell at the haven of the sea ; 
And he shall be for an haven of ships ; 
And his border shall be towards Zidon." 

This is a description of the tribal territory of Zebulon, which 
stretched nearly, though not quite, across the country from 
the Sea of Galilee in the east to the maritime plane of Phoe- 
nicia in the west, and w^hich gave the people not only a 
portion of very fertile land, but great facilities for trade and 
commerce with surrounding districts. 

To Issachar, who follows next in order, the patriarch says, 

" Issachar is a strong ass, 
Lying between the hurdles or sheepfolds ; 

* See "Daniel the Beloved," pp. 176-179. 



i8o Joseph the Prime-minister. 

And he saw that rest was good, 
And the land that it was pleasant ; 
And he bowed his shoulder to bear, 
And became a servant unto tribute." 

This also refers to the position of the inheritance of the 
tribe of Issachar, which was one of the noblest in all Pal- 
estine, consisting as it did almost exactly of the plain of 
Esdraelon or Jezreel. Hence, as the years revolved, all that 
the people inhabiting that region wished was to be let alone. 
They had their joy and their reward in their daily work, and 
so, rather than be interrupted in that, they submitted to ex- 
actions by the marauding tribes who surrounded them, in- 
stead of manfully resisting their incursions and driving them 
away. They were too comfortable and lymphatic to with- 
stand wrongs, and yet, when they were roused, they sent to 
the front good men and true — "men that had understanding 
of the times, who knew what Israel ought to do.''"^ Not 
out of disrespect, therefore — for the ass was regarded as 
noble in the East in Jacob's day, and for long after — but as 
the best possible description of the character of his tribe, 
Issachar is portrayed as the big-boned, patient, strong, plod- 
ding ass, willingly submitting to the burden of tribute, if only 
he may have the present enjoyment of his good things — a 
type surviving still among us in the persons of those citizens 
who are too busy minding their own affairs to be disturbed 
with public matters, and who will rather endure injustice 
than put themselves to trouble in removing the wrong-doers. 
Following Issachar is Dan, the first of the sons of the 
concubines on the list, and to him the patriarch exclaims, 

" Dan shall judge his people, 
As one of the tribes of Israel. 
Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, 

* I Chron. xii., 32. 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. i8i 

That biteth the heels of the horse, 
So that his rider shall fall backward." 

The meaning is, that, though the son of Bilhah the concu- 
bine, Dan should have a tribal existence and inheritance 
equally with Reuben and the other sons of Leah, and that 
in his warring with others he would manifest the qualities 
of the serpent in the cunning of his attacks and the venom 
of his bite. Of this mode of assault we have illustrations in 
the history of Samson, who belonged to this tribe, and in 
the conduct of those colonists who robbed Micah of his Le- 
vite and his gods, and went to wrest a settlement out of the 
hands of the quiet and secure inhabitants of Laish.^ And 
the same qualities appear in those among the Mormons who 
have either taken to themselves or been given the name 
Danites, suggested, as some think, by this reference to Dan 
as a serpent, and the connection of that animal with the 
primal promise. 

At this point in his address Jacob pauses a moment to 
refresh his spirit by communion with his God, and gives ut- 
terance to the pious ejaculation, " I have waited for thy sal- 
vation, O Lord" — as if he had said, " I have waited long, 
but it is coming now. Soon shall I know thy salvation fully, 
and see thy face in righteousness. The sooner the better; 
only give me strength to finish the work in which I am en- 
gaged." Then, thus refreshed in spirit, he resumed his pro- 
phetic utterances, and addressed Gad, saying, 

** Gad, a troop shall overcome him : 
But he shall overcome at the last," 

or perhaps " troops shall press on him, but he shall press 
upon their rear." There is here an allusion to the mean- 
ing of the word Gad, which signifies a troop,t and perhaps 

* Judges xviii. 

t There is, besides, a humorous play on the words in the Hebrew, 



i82 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

also to the exposed position of his territory on the east of 
Jordan, where he would be constantly open to attack by 
robbing tribes, who should often overcome him, but should 
also be harassed by him in return. A case of this kind is 
recorded in i Chron. v., 18-22, where the victory was given 
to the Gadites and their neighbors of Reuben and Manas- 
seh, because " they cried to God in the battle, and he was 
entreated of them, because they put their trust in him." 
Asher occupies the next place, and to him it is said, 

"Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, 
And he shall yield royal dainties." 

This refers to the fertility of the portion which fell to the lot 
of the tribe of Asher. That portion stretched along the 
coast of Sidonia, from Mount Carmel nearly to Mount Leb- 
anon, and was specially rich in corn, wine, and oil. But 
there is no allusion to the character of the people, who seem 
to have had the indolence of those who dwell in a land that 
is spontaneously fertile, for they could not drive out the in- 
habitants of Achzib.* They gave no judge or warrior to 
Israel, and the only name which redeems the tribe from ob- 
scurity is that of the aged widow — Anna the prophetess — 
who received the infant Saviour in her arms, and of whom it 
is recorded that '^ she departed not from the Temple at Je- 
rusalem, but served God with prayers and fastings night and 
day." 

Naphtali is thus spoken of: 

" Naphtali is a hind let loose : 
He giveth goodly words." 

This has been variously explained. Some have taken it as 

which is thus rendered by Bishop Browne : " Troops shall troop against 
him, but he shall troop on their retreat." 
* Judges i. 31. 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 183 

meaning "Naphtali is a swift messenger, like a hind that 
runneth on the mountains, bringing good tidings.'^ Others 
regard it as describing a warrior of a free and independent 
spirit, combining with his martial qualities those of poetry 
and eloquence; and they find the verification of their theory 
in the deeds of Barak and the song of Deborah, since both 
of these worthies belonged to the tribe of Naphtali. Others 
see an allusion in the words to the apostles who, *Met loose'' 
from Galilee, of which Naphtali's inheritance was a portion, 
brought to their fellow-men the "good news'' of salvation 
through Jesus Christ. While still others, with an alteration 
merely of the vowel points, make it read thus : "Naphtali is 
a spreading terebinth-tree which puts forth goodly branches," 
and refer it simply to the increase of the tribe. 

And now we come to Joseph, and we shall find that, al- 
though the venerable patriarch could not give to his well- 
beloved son the coveted distinction of being the progenitor 
of the Messiah, he yet labored to heap up blessings on his 
head, and showed even in this his latest utterance that his 
early preference for his favorite son remained with him to 
the end. Its language is more poetic than that of any of 
the other oracles, and its length contrasts especially with the 
curt and hurried brevity of those which immediately precede 
it, as if, the nearer the venerable speaker came to Joseph, 
he was the more impatient to reach him, and as if, when he 
had reached him, he hardly knew how to tear himself away 
from blessing him. It is as follows: 

"Joseph is a fruitful bough, 
A fruitful bough by a well; 
Whose branches run over the wall : 
The archers sorely grieved him, 
They shot at him, and hated him : 
But his bow abode in strength, 
And the arms of his hands were made strong, 
By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob ; 



i84 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

(From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel ;) 

From the God of thy father, and he shall help thee, 

And with the Almighty, even he shall bless thee with blessings of 

heaven above, 
Blessings of the deep that lieth under. 
Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb. 
The blessings of thy father prevail over the blessings of the eternal 

mountains. 
Even the glory of the everlasting hills ; 
They shall be on the head of Joseph, 
And on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his 

brethren." 

The first sentence of this oracle refers to the general pros- 
perity of the house of Joseph, and the spreading of the 
branches of the tree over the wall may point to the fact that 
he alone of the twelve sons of Jacob was to be the progenitor 
of two tribes. The next verses may allude to the treatment 
of Joseph by his brethren and by Potiphar, and may take 
that as typical of the history of his tribes in after-days, and 
of the help which they were to receive of the Lord. In the 
phrase "from thence is the shepherd the stone of Israel," 
some see a prophecy of Joshua, the great captain who came 
of the tribe of Ephraim, while others refer it to Joseph him- 
self, and make it mean that he was so strengthened by God 
as to become *'the shepherd of Israel," the sustainer of the 
whole of his family as well as of all Egypt in the time of fam- 
ine and distress. The blessings promised are in the main 
of a temporal sort. If we adhere to the authorized version 
of a passage which in the Hebrew is exceedingly obscure, 
these blessings were greater than those which Abraham and 
Isaac had pronounced upon their sons ; while if we follow 
the Septuagint, as we have done, the meaning is that the 
blessings of Joseph are greater than those of the mountains. 
But in any case we hear a quiver in the old man's voice as, 
after this iteration and reiteration of benediction, he says, 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 185 

"Let them come on the head of Joseph and on the crown 
of the head of him who was separated from his brethren.'' 
Last of all comes Benjamin, who is thus spoken of: 

** Benjamin shall raven as a wolf: 
In the morning he shall devour the prey, 
And at night he shall divide the spoil." 

The allusion in these words is clearly to the warlike charac- 
ter of the tribe of Benjamin, and, to borrow from an author 
already quoted this evening, '*it is interesting in its indica- 
tion of his restless and insatiable temperament. Although 
not a large tribe, as the wolf is less than the lion, yet Mittle 
Benjamin' made comparatively more mark in history than 
any of the others. At one time, by a foolhardy but charac- 
teristic opposition to the united will of the nation, the Ben- 
jamites were nearly exterminated by their brethren."^ Sub- 
sequently to that, besides Ehud the Judge, Benjamin gave 
the first king to the nation in the person of Saul, whose hero- 
ic son Jonathan was a typical Benjamite. The occurrence 
of men of this small tribe either as warriors, champions, or 
rebels, rendered it particularly famous for its hot blood and 
adventurous spirit, characteristics which, in the New Testa- 
ment, found their highest exponent in the great apostle, who 
was of the tribe of Benjamin, and who never rested or was 
satisfied in his labors." f 

Thus far we have followed closely the utterances of the 
dying Jacob, and by doing so have left ourselves little time 
for anything in the way of practical application. But, in con- 
cluding, we may fall back upon three thoughts which have 
been already suggested in the course of our exposition, and 
may seek to give them greater prominence and force. 

* Judges xix., xx., xxi. 

t '' The Great Argument," by W. H. Thomson, M.D., LL.D., p. loi. 



1 86 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

First, I would remind you of the different histories of the 
tribes of Simeon and Levi, as being alike fulfilments of one 
and the same prophecy. That was not because the predic- 
tion itself was, like some of the heathen oracles, so vague or 
so ambiguous that it could not be falsified by any event, 
for the phrases, *' I will divide them in Jacob and scatter 
them in Israel," are both definite and clear. But the expla- 
nation is to be found in the subsequent conduct of the men 
of Levi, as contrasted with that of the men of Simeon, where- 
by in the one case the prophecy took the ultimate character 
of a blessing, and in the other it kept that of a curse. Now 
this was in the lifetime of a tribe which extended over hun- 
dreds of years, but something not dissimilar may occur in 
the lifetime of an individual. Let us suppose that two men 
have been guilty of the same sin, and that as the penal con- 
sequence they have both had to bear the same thing, name- 
ly, separation from their native land and virtual transporta- 
tion to a new and strange country. But the one, unwarned 
thereby, continues in his wicked ways, and goes down and 
down in iniquity, until he ceases to be recognizable even by 
those who look for him ; while the other, moved to penitence, 
begins a new career, earns an honorable independence, gives 
himself to public affairs, and becomes a benefactor to the 
colony or the state, so that at length his name is every- 
where mentioned with gratitude and respect. Here the prox- 
imate results in both cases were the same, but the ultimate 
how different ! and all owing to the different dispositions of 
the two men. Nor is this an improbable supposition ; you 
may have come on many cases like it, and they are full of 
warning to some and encouragement to others, not only for 
the present life, but also for that which is to come. Up to 
a certain point we have power, by our penitence, to make 
blessing for ourselves for the life that now is and for that 
W'hich is to come ; nay, even after we have lost the first op- 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 187 

portunity, there may come another on a lower plane ; but at 
length there is a limit, beyond which all such opportunities 
cease, and we must " dree our weird " eternally. Brethren 
and friends, we are all like Simeon and Levi, under one and 
the same condemnation — under a curse — but any one of us 
may, like Levi, through his penitence, turn the curse into a 
blessing, and become a priest of God ; and if we do not, we 
must bear our own iniquity. Levi after his penitence be- 
came the teacher of the nation, and the sinner after his res- 
toration may, just through his peculiar experience, be all the 
better fitted for helping other men. He can never be as he 
might have been if he had not sinned, but still his very sin 
may be so overruled that he may thereby acquire a special 
fitness for a special work. It all depends, however, upon 
his penitence. Therefore, let the sinner hearing me, whoever 
he may be, and whatever may have been the consequence of 
his sin, take heart and return to God in obedience and peni- 
tence rooted in and springing out of faith, and God may yet 
make out of him a Levite consecrated for some holy service. 
Reverting again to the prophecy concerning Judah, how 
pleasant it is to observe that we have so many means of 
identifying the Messiah as the sent of God ! Any one proph- 
ecy clearly fulfilled would be enough, but we have the con- 
verging lines of almost all the predictions in the Old Testa- 
ment uniting ultimately in him. The very first one, which 
names him as the seed of the woman, has in it such peculiar 
significance that we cannot help seeing at once its interpre- 
tation and fulfilment in the manner of his birth. And in this 
utterance of Jacob, what could be more specific than his 
character as Shiloh, the Peaceful ? or more definite than the 
date of his appearance before the close of the existence of 
the nation of the Jews ? But these are only specimens of 
all the rest. " The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of proph- 
ecy.'' Each of the ancient seers stands like another John 



\ 



?" 



1 88 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

the Baptist, pointing to the Messiah and saying, in his own 
distinctive way, in one form or another, "Behold the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world." I do not see 
how it is possible to resist the force of the argument which 
may be drawn to show that Christ, and Christ alone, meets 
and fulfils all the ancient oracles in the Old Testament 
scriptures. It proves that God was in the prophecies; it 
makes it clear that God was in the history, and it makes it 
certain that "God is in Christ." Shall we not then receive 
him, and rest upon him, as our Redeemer.'^ Shall we not 
submit to him and obey him as our law-giver and king.^ 
Shall not we, too, be among the peoples that " come bend- 
ing before him ?" 

Finally, looking again at the characterization of Issachar, 
we may see the enervating influence of too comfortable cir- 
cumstances on a man or on a people. The inheritance of 
Issachar was pleasant, fertile, easily cultivated, and exceed- 
ingly remunerative. So his descendants came at length, 
for the most part, to take things easy, and submitted to 
outrages which those in poorer circumstances must have re- 
sisted even to the death. They grew indolent and luxuri- 
ous, caring for little or nothing but their own ease, and sink- 
ing at last into mere tribute-payers. Now all this reminds 
us of the truth that conflict is absolutely necessary to strength 
of character. He who has no difficulties to contend with 
has therein the great misfortune of his life ; for he has little 
or no motive for exertion, and without exertion he will be 
nothing in particular. It is a serious affliction to a man to 
be too well off, and many a son has been ruined because he 
inherited a fortune from his father. Unvarying prosperity is 
not by any means an unmingled blessing, and may be often 
a great evil. In the struggle for existence which adversity 
causes many may sink, but the "survival" is always "of the 
fittest," for it is of those who have been made by the strug- 



Jacob's Dying Prophecies. 189 

gle into manly, earnest, strong, heroic souls. Do not plume 
yourself, therefore, on your easy circumstances, for they may 
make you only selfish, indolent, and lacking in public spirit, 
like that son of Jacob who had his fitting symbol in the 
contented, because well-fed and not overloaded, ass. 

But, on the other hand, do not whimper over your pover- 
ty, for, bravely wrestled with and nobly overcome, that may 
be the very making of you. Too much money has undone 
many a youth; too little has been the spur that has urged 
on many another to put forth all his strength, and so has 
developed and increased that strength. When you are get- 
ting comfortable and easy, therefore, suspect yourselves, and 
watch lest your patriotism should grow languid, your activity 
disappear, and self-sacrifice drop entirely out of your life. 
The mill-wheel stands still when there i^ too much water as 
well as when there is too little, and Agur's prayer is always ^ 
safe — though not many New Yorkers offer it — "Give me 
neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient 
for me : Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the 
Lord ? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my 
God in vain."^ 

* Proverbs xxx., 8, 9. 



XIII. 

JACOB'S FUXERAL. 
Gex. xlix., 28 ; 1., 14. 

THE sons of Jacob were still around their father's bed. 
Plis prophetic utterances had ceased, and silence too 
sacred to be broker^ by any one of them had settled down 
upon the group of brothers. Their father was dying. They 
were with him on the very confines of the other world, and 
their souls were hushed into solemnity. It was no time for 
words of theirs, and so they waited speechless for the end. 
But Jacob had not yet finished his work. He had already, 
indeed, required Joseph to promise with an oath that he 
would bury him in Canaan, but there must be no unseemly 
dispute on such a matter among them after he was gone, and 
therefore he gave to them all the same charges concerning 
his funeral that he had laid on Joseph, dwelling with affec- 
tionate detail on all the particulars concerning Machpelah, 
and the loved ones whose remains were laid within its cave. 
Then, having " now nothing to do but to die," "" he gathered 
up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was 
gathered unto his fathers." 

This last expression is a historical reduplication of Jacob's 
own words, for he had just before said, '^ I am to be gathered 
unto my people," and it strikes the reader as a little remark- 
able. It might, perhaps, be too much to allege that there 
was in it, on Jacob's part, a recognition of the immortality 



Jacob's Funeral. 191 

of the soul, and the communion of the blessed in the disem- 
bodied state, and yet it does seem to me to be something 
more than a mere euphemism for death. It is true, indeed, 
that the patriarch had not such a clear revelation of the fut- 
ure life as Christ has now given to us, and therefore we 
are not warranted to put into this language, as it came from 
Jacob's lips, all that it would imply in those of a dying Chris- 
tian. But still I cannot help thinking that there was in it an 
expression of Jacob's confidence that when he died he would 
consciously join Isaac and Abraham in the fellowship of 
the immortals. Somewhere these fathers of his were still in 
individual spiritual existence, and thither death would take 
him to share their happiness. Thus, in parting from his sons 
his comfort was that he himself was going to his fathers, to 
enjoy with them nobler communion with their covenant God 
than earth could ever afford. They were in the better Ca- 
naan, and he was about to join them there, so he went in 
peace, like one who fell asleep. And yet what a change ! A 
little while ago and the intellect was bright and clear, the 
voice was strong, and the mind all aglow with a divine in- 
spiration which was bodying for the distinct description of 
the wondrous symbols under which the future of the tribes 
had been revealed to him ; and now there is nothing but a 
lifeless form, an empty house, whose great inhabitant has 
gone. It is a dreadful mystery; one moment the father 
speaks in love and tenderness, the next you speak to him 
and he is not there, but has gone by a door you have not 
seen, into a realm so near that there is but a thin veil be- 
tween you and it, and yet so far that the separation of a con- 
tinent is not so thorough. 

"Life and Thought have gone away- 
Side by side, 
Leaving door and windows wide. 
Careless tenants they! 



192 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

** All within is dark as night : 
In the windows is no light; 
And no murmur at the door, 
So frequent on its hinge before. 

*' Close the door, the shutters close, 

Or thro' the windows we shall see 
The nakedness and vacancy 
Of the dark deserted house."* 

So, perhaps, Joseph felt when he advanced, according to the 
promise that went before concerning him, and put his hand 
upon his father's eyes to shut their lids for the last time, and 
hide their soullessness from view. But he could not perform 
that office of affection without the deepest emotion, for, as 
he did it, all the past would come rushing back upon him, 
and give intensity to the pang of the present. The early love 
that clothed him in the costly robe, combined with the later 
pride that rejoiced so unfeignedly in his Egyptian greatness 
to move him into tears. It was the first time since he knew 
its meaning that death had come so near himself. He w^as 
too young to realize all his loss when his mother Rachel had 
been taken. But now, after those seventeen years of unal- 
loyed delight in each other, which they had been permitted 
to enjoy as the sequel to the varied experiences through which 
they had both been brought; after they had come really 
to know and appreciate each other in that endearing inter- 
course in which the fatherhood of the one and the sonship 
of the other had risen into the noblest sort of brotherhood, 
his father is laid low, and he feels the blow most keen- 
ly. True, Jacob was an old man, but, strange as it may seem 
to some, that only made him dearer, and, most of all, he was 
his father once before lost, and only recently restored; and 
the thought of that so overpowered him "that he fell upon 
his face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.'' 

* Tennyson. 



Jacob's Funeral. 193 

But even such grief as that must not hinder him from car- 
rying out his father's commands, and so, as representing his 
brothers, he took upon himself all the arrangements for the 
funeral. But while complying with the wish of his parent, 
he at the same time conformed, as far as it was possible or 
practicable, to the customs of the country with which he was 
himself so prominendy identified. It will contribute, there- 
fore, to a better understanding of the narrative, if we should 
give you here, as succinctly as possible, an account of the 
Egyptian manner of disposing of the dead. It was part of 
the creed of these ancient people that at death the soul of a 
man entered into the body of an animal, and passed from that 
through a series of such transmigrations until it was thorough- 
ly purified, when it returned to that to which it had originally 
belonged. They believed thus in what was known among 
the Greeks as "metempsychosis," and also in the resump- 
tion of the body by the soul after the appointed circle of 
transmigrations had been finished. Their doctrine thus was 
not that of the resurrection of the body, as Paul teaches it, 
but rather that of the actual resumption by the soul of the 
identical body which it had left at first, and faith in that led 
them to take means for the preservation of the body "in or- 
der to keep it in a fit state to receive the soul which once 
inhabited it; and the various occupations followed by the 
Egyptians during the lifetime of the deceased, which were 
represented in the sculptures, as well as his arms, the imple- 
ments he used, or whatever was most precious to him, which 
were deposited in the tomb with his cofiin, might be intended 
for his benefit at the time of this reunion, which at the least 
possible period was fixed at three thousand years."^ The 

* Wilkinson, " Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii., p. 465. But Wilkinson 
does not speak with absolute decision on this point, and the para- 
graph immediately following that from which the above extract is 
taken begins thus : " We are, therefore, still in uncertainty respecting 

9 



194 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

process which they followed for this preservation of the body 
was that which we now know as embalming, and which has 
been minutely described by such ancient wTiters as Herodo- 
tus and Diodorus. There were three different methods, \'a- 
rying in the extent of the operations performed and in the 
amount of expense incurred. The most costly process, 
which was most likely that adopted in the case of Jacob, 
and which required an outlay of one thousand two hundred 
and fifty dollars, consisted in the removal of the brain and 
the viscera, the washing of the. cavities thus made with cer- 
tain fragrant liquors, the filling of these with powder of 
myrrh, cassia, and other spices, and then the placing of the 
whole body thus prepared in a solution of natron, i.e., salt- 
petre, for a certain specified number of days."* When these 



the actual intentions of the Eg}'ptians in thus preserving the body and 
ornamenting their sepulchres at so great expense ; nor is there any de- 
cided proof that the resurrection of the body was a tenet of their religion. 
It is, however, highly probable that such was their belief, since no other 
satisfactory reason can be given for the great care of the body after 
death." For resurrection we should read resumption of the body, since 
the former term ought now to be restricted to such a passing on to a 
higher human life as Paul has described. 

* It has, however, been doubted whether these ancient authors give 
all the secret of the embalming process. Thornley Smith has the follow- 
ing in a note in his volume on Joseph, p. 259 : " It has been found that the 
process described by Herodotus and Diodorus is not effectual in preserv- 
ing bodies long, so that it is supposed by some that there was a secret in 
the art with which they were not acquainted ;" and a writer in the Ai/ie- 
iicEum for June, 1850, states it as his opinion : '* i. That an essential part 
of the mummifying process was the application of heat to the body, pre- 
viously filled with tarr\' substances and securely wrapped in a dense 
layer of bandages ; and 2. That, of necessity, in bodies so treated must be 
formed by the two (as a product of its decomposition by heat) that sub- 
stance to which the name of creosote has been given, from its flesh-pre- 
serving properties (icpewc and cwr/ip), and which was first obtained as a 
separate substance by Reechenbach." 



Jacob's Funeral. 195 

were fulfilled, the body was washed, and wrapped up in bands 
of fine linen, which were fastened on the inner side with gum, 
and which often extended to the length of a thousand yards. 
After all this, which required forty days, the body was de- 
livered over to the relatives, who placed it in a stone or 
wooden coffin; and then the proper family mourning began. 
That lasted for thirty days, and at the close of these came 
the funeral services which are thus described by AVilkinson, 
who quotes mainly from Diodorus. 

But before I give his statements, permit me to premise 
that every large city — such as Thebes, Memphis, and other 
places — had its sacred lake, on the farther shore of which 
were the tombs in which the cases or coffins containing the 
embalmed bodies were buried. When the tomb was ready, 
and all the necessary preparations had been made, " the cof- 
fin, or mummy-case, was carried forth and deposited in the 
hearse, drawn upon a sledge, to the sacred lake of the Nome " 
(department or district), "notice having been previously giv- 
en to the judges, and a public announcement made of the 
appointed clay. Forty-two judges having been summoned 
and placed in a semicircle near the banks of the lake, a boat 
was brought up, provided expressly for the occasion, under 
the direction of a boatman, called in the Egyptian language 
Charon, and it is from hence that the fable is said to be 
derived which Orpheus introduced into Greece. For while 
in Egypt he had witnessed this ceremony, and he imitated a 
portion of it, and supplied the rest from his own imagina- 
tion. When the boat was ready for the reception of the 
coffin, it was lawful for any person who thought proper to 
bring forward his accusation against the deceased. If it 
could be proved that he had led an evil life, the judges de- 
clared accordingly, and the body was deprived of the accus- 
tomed sepulture; but if the accuser failed to establish what 
he advanced, he was subject to the heaviest penalties. When 



196 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

there was no accuser, or when the accusation had been dis- 
proved, the relations ceased from their lamentations, and 
pronounced encomiums on the deceased. They did not 
enlarge upon his descent, as is usual among the Greeks — 
for they held that all the Egyptians are equally noble — but 
they related his early education and the course of his stud- 
ies, and then, praising his piety and justice in manhood, his 
temperance, and the other virtues he possessed, they suppli- 
cated the gods below to receive him as a companion of the 
pious. This announcement was received by the assembled 
multitude with acclamations, and they joined in extolling the 
glory of the deceased, who was about to remain forever with 
the virtuous in the regions of Hades. The body was then 
taken by those who had family catacombs already prepared, 
and placed in the repository allotted to it.'^^ 

This description, abundantly interesting and deeply sug- 
gestive in itself, will enable us at once to see in how far Jo- 
seph observed, and in how far he deviated from, the customs 
of Egypt in arranging for the funeral of his father. We read 
that "he commanded his servants the physicians to embalm 
his father '^ — a statement which seems to our modern ears a 
little peculiar. But it has to be borne in mind that in the 
Egypt of that day every physician confined himself to the 
study and treatment of one disease, or of the diseases of one 
organ of the body ; so that the medical men then were all 
what we should now call specialists, and a grandee like Jo- 
seph would require in his establishment a whole faculty of 
doctors. t It was thus the most natural thing in the world 
that the embalming arrangements should be put under the 
direction of these professional men, though the actual carry- 
ing of them out might be left to the class of persons who 

* Wilkinson's " The Ancient Egyptians," vol. iii., pp. 453, 454. 

f On this point see Wilkinson, vol. ii., pp. 355, 356 ; vol. iii., p. 477. 



Jacob's Funeral. 197 

were known as embalmers, and who devoted themselves ex- 
clusively to that particular work. This filled up forty days. 
Then came the thirty days of mourning, during which the 
custom of the Egyptians was, that " the family mourned at 
home, singing the funeral dirge, and all the time they abstain- 
ed from the bath, wine, the delicacies of the table, and rich 
clothing. On the death in any house of a person of conse- 
quence, forthwith the women beplastered their heads, and 
sometimes even their faces, with mud, and sallied forth, wan- 
dering through the city with their dresses fastened with a 
band and their bosoms bare, beating themselves as they 
walked. The men, similarly begirt, beat their breasts sepa- 
rately."* Joseph, therefore, with his brethren, sat in seclu- 
sion, unshaven and unwashed; while without, in token of 
honor to his father for his sake, the people, after their own 
custom, would do as Herodotus, in the words I have just 
quoted, has described; for this was a public mourning, and 
the public arrangements, therefore, were not in Joseph's 
hands. 

But now the time for the removing of the remains of his 
father to Canaan drew nigh. He could not do that, how- 
ever, without the permission of Pharaoh, and in his mourn- 
ing undress, unshaven and unwashed, he could not go per- 
sonally to the monarch. Therefore he sought the mediation 
of others, and through those already in the house of Pharaoh 
he presented his request that he might be permitted to take 
Jacob's remains to Canaan, giving natural, and perhaps also 
politic, prominence to the fact that he was seeking to carry 
out a promise which, under solemn oath, he had made to his 
father. The permission asked was granted, and the twelve 
brothers and their families, with but the exception of the lit- 
tle ones, and accompanied by a goodly array of chariots and 

* Rawlinson's " Herodotus," as quoted by Jamieson. Comm. /'// loco. 



198 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

horsemen from among the Egyptians, set out from Goshen 
for the land of Canaan. AVe have no particulars about the 
route which they followed, nor can we certainly identify the 
threshing-floor of Atad, where they halted for seven days for 
the completion of the mourning services, though there is no 
trace of any such judgment ordeal as that which the Egyptians 
held on the margin of their sacred lake. All we know is 
that the lamentations were so great as to attract the attention 
of the inhabitants, who named the place always afterwards 
Abel-^Iizraim — the field or mourning of the Egyptians. It 
has not yet been discovered, and there is some doubt about 
its site, but taking the phrase, '' which is beyond Jordan," as 
written by one still on its eastern shore, we incline to the 
belief that we are to look for Abel-Mizraim on the western 
side of that river; and perhaps they may not be far out of the 
way who put it in the neighborhood of Hebron. At that 
place, wherever it was, the children of the patriarch left their 
Egyptian convoy for the time, while they took the remains 
of their father and reverently laid them in the Cave of Mach- 
pelah beside those of his kindred. 

What an interesting place that Hebron cave must be ! 
Unlike many of the so-called sacred sites now pointed out 
to travellers in Palestine, this one is authentic and undoubt- 
ed. In the name of the city El Khulil — the Friend — there is 
a striking memorial of Abraham himself, " the friend of God," 
and the field which he bought from Ephron the Hittite is 
still identified. It is occupied now by a great mosque, whose 
external w^all forms a parallelogram one hundred and nine- 
ty-eight feet long by one hundred and thirteen and a half 
broad. The height of the wall is forty-eight feet, and the 
masonry of which it is composed is so massive as to recall 
to the traveller that of the Temple w^alls at the Jew's wailing- 
place in Jerusalem. Entrance into this mosque has been so 
sacredly guarded that no one not a Mohammedan gained 



Jacob's Funeral. 199 

admission into it for, I suppose, centuries, until the Prince 
of Wales, accompanied by Dean Stanley, General Bruce, and 
Dr. Rosen, were permitted to go in on the occasion of the 
visit to Palestine made by the heir to the British throne in 
1862. Since then a like privilege has been accorded to 
Mr. Fergusson the architect, tl:^ Marquis of Bute, M. Pierotti, 
and the Crown Prince of Prussia. Dean Stanley has given 
a most interesting description, both of the diplomatic means 
which were used for gaining admission and of the interior 
of the mosque itself, in the appendix to the first volume of 
his " Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church," from 
which I take the following extracts: *'With regard to the 
building itself, two points at once became apparent. First, 
it was clear that it had been originally a Byzantine church ; . . . 
second, it was clear that it had been converted at a much 
later period into a mosque. The tombs of the Patriarchs 
do not profess to be the actual places of sepulture, but are 
merely monuments or cenotaphs in honor of the dead who 
lie beneath. Each is enclosed within a separate chapel or 
shrine, closed with gates or railings similar to those w^hich 
surround or enclose the special chapels or royal tombs in 
Westminster Abbey. The two first of these are contained 
in the inner portico or narthex before the entrance into the 
actual building of the mosque. In the recess on the right is 
the shrine of Abraham ; in the recess on the left that of Sa- 
rah, each guarded by silver gates. The shrine of Sarah we 
were requested not to enter, as being that of a woman. . . . With- 
in the area of the church or mosque were shown the tombs 
of Isaac and Rebekah. They are placed under separate 
chapels, in the walls of which are windows, and of which the 
gates are grated not with silver but iron bars. . . . The shrines 
of Jacob and Leah were shown in recesses corresponding to 
those of Abraham and Sarah, but in a separate cloister op- 
posite to the entrance of the mosque. Against Leah^s tomb, 



200 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

as seen through the iron grate, two green banners reclined, 
the origin and meaning of which were unknown." Another 
tomb shown is that of Joseph, who, however, was buried at 
Shechem ; and on the outside of the mosque are two shrines 
which are said to be merely ornamental. The dean proceeds : 
"One indication alone of the cavern beneath was visible. 
In the interior of the mosque, at the corner of the shrine of 
Abraham, was a small circular hole, about eight inches across, 
of which one foot above the pavement was built of strong 
masonry, but of which the lower part, as far as we could see 
and feel, was of the living rock. This cavity appeared to open 
into a dark space beneath, and that space (which the guardi- 
ans of the mosque believed to extend under the whole plat- 
form) can hardly be anything else than the ancient cavern of 
Machpelah. This was the only aperture which the guardians 
recognized. 'Once,' they said, 'two thousand five hundred 
years ago, a servant of a great king had penetrated through 
some other entrance. He descended in full possession of his 
faculties and of remarkable corpulence ; he returned blind, 
deaf, withered and crippled.' Since then the entrance w^as 
closed, and this aperture alone was left — partly for the sake 
of suffering the holy air of the cave to escape into the mosque 
and be scented by the faithful, partly for the sake of allow- 
ing a lamp to be let down by a chain which we saw suspend- 
ed at the mouth, to burn upon the sacred grave. We asked 
whether it could not be lighted now ? ' No,' they said ; ' the 
saint likes to have a lamp at night, but not in the full day- 
light.' With that glimpse into the dark void we and the 
world without must for the present be satisfied. Whether 
any other entrance is known to the Mussulmans therriselves 
must be a matter of doubt. The original entrance to the 
cave, if it is now to be found at all, must probably be on the 
southern face of the hill, between the mosque and the gallery 
containing the shrine of Joseph, and entirely obstructed by 



Jacob's Funeral. 201 

the ancient Jewish wall probably built across it for this very 
purpose." "* Such, up to the present date, is all that is 
known of Machpelah ; but we may hope that, as Turkish 
power wanes in the East, and Mussulman exclusiveness gives 
way before the inevitable influence of the modern intercourse 
of nation with nation, the cave itself will be explored, and 
the veritable mummy of Jacob be exhumed to bear its irre- 
futable testimony to the truthfulness of this ancient history. 

We read of no services at the place of burial, and we may 
not presume to conjecture what was said or done at the 
grave. All we know is that the twelve brothers left the re- 
mains of their venerable father there, and turned away, no 
doubt, in pensive mood, to go back to their children and 
their flocks, and their common occupations in the land of 
Goshen. All of us have experienced how hard a thing it is 
to take up the cares and work of our common lives, after 
their paltriness has been seen by us at the tomb of a beloved 
one, and without the solace and joy which we were wont to 
receive from his fellowship and encouragement. But yet it 
has to be done, and in the doing of it there is, in God's 
good providence, a compensation of comfort ; for every mourn- 
er will tell you that his consolation has come to him most 
richly when, looking up to God for support, he has set him- 
self to the discharge of daily duty, and forgotten himself in 
the service of his master, in the sphere of his appointment. 

But now, as we take leave of Jacob, we cannot but be re- 
minded of the great lesson of his life. A strangely check- 
ered career it was which ended in this great funeral at 
Machpelah; but it is clearly divided into two portions, both 
of which are alike instructive to the Bible student. In the 
outset we find in him little attractiveness. True, even from 
the first, there must have been in him a winsome affection- 



* Stanley's "Jewish Church," vol. i., pp. 431-442. 



202 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

ateness of disposition which gained for him his mother's 
partiality. But he was by nature, then, as well as by name, 
the supplanter, a master of intrigue, who once and again 
outwitted his rough, blunt, and bold Bedouin brother Esau. 
Yet withal, unscrupulous as he was, let us not forget to note 
that from the first his eye was on the future, and that he 
lived for that. Therein lay the great difference between him 
and his brother. Esau cared for nothing but the present. 
Give him the pleasures of the chase, the gratification of ap- 
petite, and the enjoyment of the moment, and he was con- 
tent. But Jacob had the consciousness that there was a 
future before him. He knew that the mysterious birthright 
was to be his; to that his mother had taught him always to 
look forward; and though he had little idea then of all that 
was involved in it, and had not enough faith in God to leave 
the time and manner of his getting it entirely to him, yet he 
did subordinate to its attainment many things in the pres- 
ent. Still, even to get that good, he did the evil of deceit, and 
so, up to his departure from his father's house, we have little 
genuine admiration for his character or conduct. But with 
the Bethel vision his new life began. Then for the first time 
he came face to face with God, and from that hour the divine 
training of the heir to the covenant commenced. He was 
sent to Laban's house, that there, from his own practical ex- 
perience, he might learn what an evil and a bitter thing it is 
to be deceived; and though there remained, after all the 
discipline of these twenty years, some of his old self-trusting 
subtlety, which led to his stealthy flight, all that w^as ultimate- 
ly dislodged from him by the Peniel wrestling. He went over 
the Jabbok that night to pray earnestly for placability to- 
wards him in the heart of Esau, and there he was again con- 
fronted by the covenant angel, who virtually said to him, 
" It is not Esau that you have to fear. The greatest evil 
for you is the enmity of God, and if you can secure deliver- 



Jacob's Funeral, 203 

ance from that all else will soon be well. Right with God, 
you may trust him to set you right with your brother." This 
led him to forget his first errand across the ford, so that, 
instead of crying for the appeasement of Esau, he exclaimed, 
"Tell me Thy name, thou great unknown;" and with the 
revelation of that Love which is the nature and the name of 
God, there came to him, as with the same revelation there 
comes yet to every man the new name and the new nature, 
Israel. Thenceforward he is all that we could desire him 
to be. His trials, indeed, continue; for, as Wilberforce^ re- 
marks, "The punishment of the 'supplanter's ' subtlety last- 
ed on after its sin had been forgiven to the Prince of God ;" 
but through all these trials — the folly of Reuben, the dis- 
honor of Dinah, the cruelty of Simeon and Levi, the deceit 
of his sons, the loss of Joseph — we see the chastened spirit 
of a saint, and in the end he goes down, like the sun in the 
summer sky, through banks of glory clouds, leaving a trail 
of radiant purple behind him that ravishes the eye of every 
beholder. Thus a career that began in deceit was closed in 
excellence. 

Now, with such a history contrast that of a man, say, like 
King Saul. We are attracted to him from the very firsts 
We do not wonder that the people, when they saw him f on 
his election-day, raised the glad shout, " Long live the king !" 
W^e admire the promptitude, the energy, and the bravery of 
his conduct in his deliverance of the men of Jabesh Gilead ; 
and even after his sin in the matter of the Amalekites, we 
are not surprised that Samuel should have so clung to him 
and loved him ; indeed, we rather agree with the old prophet 
in the sentiment. But as his life course goes on, there is a 
constant deterioration in his character. His envy of David 
comes out. His cruelty, his cunning, his vindictiv^eness, 

* " Heroes of Hebrew History," p, 51. f i Sam. x., 24. 



204 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

make their appearance, and we follow him down and down 
and down until we find him at the door of the Endor cave, 
committing what one has described as "probably as nearly 
the sin against the Holy Ghost as it was possible for one 
under the old covenant, and before the day of Pentecost,"^ 
to commit." Here, therefore, there was just the opposite 
of that which we have seen in Jacob. Here was a career 
opening with splendid promise and with much attractive- 
ness, but closed in uttermost dishonor. And what we have 
marked in these two contrasted histories we may see- — 
some of us, perhaps, have often seen — in the careers of mod- 
ern men. Now how shall we explain the difference ? Thus, 
— all Jacob's trials sent him to God, and shook him out of 
himself; all those of Saul drove him away from God, and 
rooted him more firmly in himself And in that explanation 
lies the lesson of Jacob's life. No matter what your past 
career may have had in it of what was evil, supplanting, dis- 
honorable, there is hope for you, if you will go to God and 
ask him to reveal his name to you. There is a door-way in 
that out into a new and nobler self for you. But, on the 
other hand, no matter how much there has been of promise 
and apparent prophecy of good in your past career, it will 
surely end in blackest disappointment to you and all around 
you if you attempt to build your future simply on yourselves. 
Your relation to God will ultimately determine everything 
about you — of character and real success in life. If thus 
far you have failed, betake yourself to God in Christ, and 
that will be your Bethel, or Peniel, the turning-point of your 
history, the water-shed of your life. And again, whatever 
of loveliness there may have been thus far about you, that is 
enduring only in as far as you connect it with God in Christ. 
Young men, take this lesson with you from the contrast be- 

* Trench's " Shipwrecks of Faith," p. 45. 



Jacob's Funeral. 205 

tween the Machpelah funeral of Jacob and the dark ending 
of that royal life on Mount Gilboa, and that it may have all 
the more power with you, let me give it in the words of Arch- 
bishop Trench : " Build on no good thing which you find 
within yourselves. Humane, generous, high-minded, brave 
you may be, cherishing large purposes for the welfare of 
others, willing to devote yourselves in a spirit of earnest self- 
sacrifice to their good. But life is strong — how strong none 
can guess till they have tried to abate the edge of high res- 
olutions, to dwarf, to stunt, and at last to strangle the nobler 
growths of the soul, to lead men to forget, sometimes, alas ! 
to despise the loftier dreams and purer aspirations of their 
youth. There is only one pledge for the permanence of any 
good thing that is in you, namely, that you bring it to God, 
and that you reserve it for God with that higher consecra- 
tion which he only can give it — not now any more a virtue 
of this world, but a grace of the kingdom of heaven ; and that 
you bring it to him again and again, for indeed all your fresh 
springs must be in him; and they that wait on him, they, and 
they only, renew their strength, run and are not weary, walk 
and are not faint ; they, and they only, bring forth fruit in old 
age to show that the Lord is upright, and that there is no 
unrighteousness in him." 

* Trench's " Shipwrecks of Faith," pp. 55, 56. 



XIV. 

JOSEPH'S DEATH. 

Gen. 1., 15-26. 

FROM Machpelah the brothers returned to Egypt to re- 
sume their usual work. But the absence of Jacob re- 
awakened in the hearts of ten of them the sense of their 
ill-desert for their treatment of Joseph long ago, and made 
them fear that now he might visit them with the punishment 
which their cruelty had merited. They supposed that their 
brother's kindness to them had been shown simply for their 
father's sake, and that it was Jacob's presence alone that 
secured their immunity. They knew Joseph so imperfectly 
that they judged him to have a disposition like that of Esau, 
who threatened his brother after this fashion : " The days 
of mourning for my father are at hand ; then will I slay my 
brother Jacob /'^ and they were afraid lest now he should be 
moved, either to put them to death, or to subject them to 
some most ignominious treatment. But it was not the pres- 
ence of Jacob that had moved Joseph to his clemency. Had 
that been all that held him from revenge they might well 
have trembled; for he had the power of Eg}'pt at his back, 
and there was no one in the kingdom who would have called 
him to account either for its use or its abuse. But that 
which weighed with Joseph was his experience of the near- 
ness and the goodness of his God. Jacob might die, but 

Gen. xxvii., 41. 



Joseph's Death. 207 

God remained, and that God had been with him and made 
him prosperous in everything he did. It would have been 
a poor return, therefore, for his goodness, if he had dealt 
sternly and implacably with his own brothers. His gratitude 
for the divine favor thus showed itself in his tenderness to- 
wards them after he was fully convinced that they had truly 
acknowledged their guilt, and heartily repented of their sin. 
He put them to a severe test, in order to find out how they 
felt about their conduct towards himself, but when once he 
was satisfied on that point he frankly, fully, and permanently 
forgave them. 

It is a hard thing to forgive those who have done us griev- I 
ous injury. We may, perhaps, without much difficulty, come 
so far as to refrain from visiting them with positive punish- 
ment. But to be to them as we w^ould have been if they 
had never wronged us ; to have no constraint in our inter- 
course with them from our remembrance of their attempt to 
do us harm ; to take them back into our confidence again, 
and trust them as if nothing had occurred — that is hard in- 
deed. Yet, if we are thoroughly persuaded of the genuine- 
ness of their repentance, and have, ourselves, a deep sense 
of gratitude to God for his remission of our own sins against 
him, we may be enabled by his grace and spirit to deal with 
others as he has dealt with ourselves. 

But hard as it is to forgive, it is a yet more difficult thing 
for human nature, unaided by divine grace, frankly and un- 
suspectingly to accept forgiveness. The wrong-doer meas- 
ures others by himself, and therefore he is always suspi- 
cious that there is some lurking treachery in the overtures 
of reconciliation that are made to him by the man whom he 
has injured. He cannot believe in disinterested generosity 
or undesigning goodness, and therefore he is apt to treat all 
offers of forgiveness as snares which have been set in order 
the more effectually to catch him for punishment. This is 



2o8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

the reason why men so generally reject the message of the 
Gospel itself; and it furnishes the explanation of the well- 
known fact that he who does the wrong is always harder to 
be won to reconciliation than he who received the injury. 
Indeed to such an extent is this the case, that only when the 
hearts of both are softened by a sense of their obligation to 
God for his forgiveness, can there be anything like a perma- 
nent or unsuspicious healing of the breach between them. 
To be able to forgive, one must first himself have received 
forgiveness from God ; and he who has tasted the divine fa- 
vor, and knows how the reception of that disposes the heart 
to the love of others, will be the frankest also in his accept- 
ance of forgiveness at the hands of him whom he has in- 
jured. The closer a man's walk with God is, the more will 
he be disposed to deal forgivingly with those who wrong 
him ; but human magnanimity will always be suspected by 
those who have not yet appreciated the divine. The men 
who believe most thoroughly in human depravity, and, along 
with that, in divine mercy, are those who are most tender in 
their dealings with wrong-doers; while those who have great- 
est faith in what they call the dignity of human nature, and 
have not learned the meaning of the cross, are always the 
most suspicious of their fellows. It seems to be a strange 
paradox, and yet it is the simple truth. 

The brothers here could not understand, as they certainly 
did not appreciate, the character of Joseph. But though 
they erred in that, they took the proper course in making im- 
mediate application to himself on the subject. They did not 
go to him directly, but approached him at first, at least, through 
the medium of another — most probably, perhaps, Benjamin — 
who said, in their behalf, " Thy father did command before 
he died, saying, so shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray 
thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin ; for they 
did unto thee evil : and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass 



Joseph's Death. 209 

of the servants of the God of thy father." Some have in- / 
sinuated that in causing their advocate to speak thus they 
were guilty of falsehood, since there is no mention in the 
narrative of Jacob's saying anything of this sort to them. 
But that only shows to what ridiculous lengths the argument 
from silence, never very satisfactory at the best, may be 
driven ; for we have in this history, interesting as it is, the 
merest outline of the lives of those to whom it refers, and in 
two of the verses of this chapter we have the events of sixty 
years summarized. How absurd, therefore, it is to argue that 
because in such an epitome as this record is we have no ac- 
count of Jacob's ever saying this to his sons, therefore he 
never said it ! Besides, on an occasion like this, the broth- 
ers were not likely to go to Joseph with a falsehood in their 
mouths. It is quite probable, therefore, that in the antici- 
pation of their father's death they had spoken to him of their 
fear lest, after his departure, Joseph might punish them for 
their sin, and that he had advised or commanded them to 
take the course which they were now following. Moreover, 
they knew that the fact that their father had so counselled 
them would have immense weight with Joseph, and therefore 
they made distinct mention of it in their plea. Nor did they 
use that name in vain, for "Joseph wept when they spake 
unto him." Their words opened up again a painful chapter 
in his history, and brought to bear upon that the memory of 
the grief which had convulsed his heart at the death of his 
father, while at the same time they revealed that he was 
even yet an object of suspicion and distrust to his brothers. 
" Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known me, Philip ?" said the Lord to his disciple, in answer 
to a question which indicated the spiritual obtuseness of the 
apostle ; and similarly here Joseph might have said, " Have 
you been so long time with me, the sharers of my prosperity, 
and the objects of my constant care, and yet do you not 



210 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

know me better than to have such unworthy thoughts con- 
cerning me? When have I given you any ground for cher- 
ishing such unworthy sentiments regarding me ?'^ But there 
were no words of objurgation. The only reproof he addressed 
to them was in his tears ; and as they — once again uncon- 
sciously fulfilling the old dream — fell down before his face, 
he reassured them with these words, '^Fear not: for am I in 
the place of God.? But as for you, ye thought evil against 
me; but God meant it 'unto good, to bring to pass, as it is 
this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye 
not : I will nourish you and your little ones." Joseph re- 
garded it as the special prerogative of God to punish iniquity, 
and he would not attempt to take the divine law into his own 
hands. It was not his, either to punish or to forgive wrong 
so far as it was sin. Instead, therefore, of coming to him 
they ought to go to God. Then, so far as the injury to him- 
self was concerned, it was, to be sure, hard enough to bear 
at the time, but then God had brought so much good out of 
it both to himself and to others, that he had come now to 
look upon it as only a needed step towards the great honor 
of his life, and therefore he cherished no enmity towards 
them because of it, and they need have no fear whatever of 
his dealing harshly with them. He would continue to do as 
he had done ever since their removal to Egypt, and w^ould 
nourish them and their little ones with all tenderness and 
affection. 

"Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto 
good'' — that is the golden lesson that comes out of this whole 
history. The Providence of God was in and over every in- 
cident in it, making them all co-operate for the bringing 
about of the great design which he had for the deliverance 
of the people in famine, for the education of the children of 
Israel in Egypt, and for the unification of them at length 
into a nation capable of taking possession of the Land of 



Joseph's Death. 2 1 1 

Promise. We have had occasion frequently to mark how 
the superintendence of God regulates the events of nature, 
even without any miraculous intervention with what are 
called natural laws, and repeatedly in this history we have 
noticed how the common and ordinary operations of these 
laws have been so adjusted and combined as to bring out 
results that were clearly designed, the supernatural thus 
working in and through the natural. But the special point 
in Joseph's words here is, that the same control is exercised 
by God in and over the actions of men. They are free 
agents, conscious of no constraint, and seeking only their 
own things, yet through the prosecution by them of their 
own selfish and sinful ends God works out at length his ow^n 
holy and benevolent purposes. These brothers were eager 
only to get rid of Joseph, and at first thought to kill him; 
but one of their number persuaded them to put him into a 
pit, and another, having the thing apparently suggested to 
him at the moment, by what spemed the accidental presence 
of the trading Ishmaelites, proposed to sell him to them. 
This was agreed to by the rest and consented to by the Ish- 
maelites, and so he was taken to Egypt. Now see how many 
wills — all of them free — were concerned in this matter, and 
how at length, through the evil intentions and actions of his 
brothers, and the selfish gain-seeking of the Ishmaelites, 
God carried forward his purpose for Joseph's elevation, and 
the emigration of Jacob and his sons to Egypt. The same 
thing comes out in connection with his imprisonment in 
Egypt. Potiphar's wife was seeking only to gratify her re- 
venge when she concocted the lie with w'hich she imposed 
upon her husband, and Potiphar himself was taking means 
for the wreaking out of his anger w^hen he sent him to the 
dungeon. Yet here again, through all these self-seeking ac- 
tions of theirs, God was bringing Joseph only so much the 
nearer to Pharaoh and his ultimate position by the monarch's 



212 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

side. Once more the chief butler and chief baker were work- 
ing for their own ends when they did what offended their mas- 
ter, and he was only thinking of their punishment when he 
put them into the prison ; yet in the conjunction of their 
presence therewith that of Joseph we see one of the critical 
hinges on which the history turns, and can perceive the pur- 
pose of God working itself out through the agency of men. 
If vou ask me how this is done without infrino:ino: on human 
freedom, I frankly answer that I cannot tell ; but that it was 
done in this history is abundantly plain. And this history 
is not by any means exceptional in that regard. Assyria, as 
we read in Isaiah,^ was employed by Jehovah as his instru- 
ment for the punishment of Israel ; yet it is said concerning 
him, *^ Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart 
think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations 
not a few." But perhaps in no one event in human history 
is this truth so clearly illustrated as in the crucifixion of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus Peter speaks in his 
Pentecostal sermon : " Him, being delivered by the determi- 
nate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and 
by wicked hands have crucified and slain.'' f Now, if these 
words have any meaning at all, they assert that all the events 
connected with the crucifixion of the Lord were foreplanned 
and foretold, and that God was in them, controlling them so 
as to make them work together for a certain result, while 
yet the agents in them were acting freely from their own mo- 
tives, and therefore wickedly. Now, although I cannot ex- 
plain how this is secured, and will not be enticed into any 
attempt to do so, I have been the more particular to bring 
out the fact that the actions of men are under the control of 
God, because it is in this department that our faith in Provi- 
dence is weakest. When a fellow-man injures us we are apt 

* Isaiah x., 5-7. t Acts ii., 23. 



Joseph's Death. 213 

to say, that if it had been a dispensation of Providence we 
could have borne it, but that this is beyond endurance. Now 
of course there is an immense difference between what God 
does directly and what he simply permits others to do ; yet 
the fact that the actions so permitted are wrought into his 
plan of our lives, and made to help it forward to its fulfilment, 
ought surely to have some importance in our view, and ought 
to lead us at once to humble resignation to God's will, and 
hearty forgiveness of those who may have injured us. This 
was the view of David when Shimei cursed him ; for he said, 
**Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him."^ This also 
was the view of the Christians at Cesarea ; for, after they 
had heard the prophecy of Agabus, and had in vain impor- 
tuned Paul not to go to Jerusalem, it is written, "And when 
he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will 
of the Lord be done.^f That is to say, they recognized the 
Providence and will of God in the Apostle's unyielding de- 
termination, and submitted to it as such. The same princi- 
ple is acknowledged in the common proverb, to the effect 
that "man proposes, but God disposes;" and it seems to me 
that if we were more constantly to remember it, we should 
find it easier to possess our souls in patience and in peace, 
even under the ill-treatment to which men may subject us. 
It does not diminish the guilt of those who wrong us, but it 
does give us a staff to support us under the wrong ; for it re- 
minds us that God is over all, and it leads us to look for 
some result of good from our present humiliation. 

Now if these things are true, it follows that nothing in our 
lives is really untoward, but that everything gives its own 
quotum towards the good result that God has planned for us. 
Here is the "open secret" of that marvellous equanimity 
which is so characteristic of Joseph from first to last. We 

* 2 Sam. XV., II. f Acts xxi., 14. 



214 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

understand now why he was neither overwhelmed by the ca- 
lamities of his youthful years, nor made giddy by the great- 
ness to which in his latter days he was exalted. Wherever 
he was, and whatever happened to him, he had the unfalter- 
ing conviction that *^God meant it unto good;" and if we 
had the same trust in the wise and loving arrangements of 
an all-superintending God, we, too, might continue peace- 
ful amid all the changes and surprises of our earthly lives. 
Whoso has this faith may sing with tranquil heart these sim- 
ple lines : 

" Father, I know that all my life 

Is portioned out by thee ; 
And the changes that are sure to come 

I do not fear to see ; 
But I ask thee for a present mind 

Intent on pleasing thee." 

And now we leap over an interval of sixty-one years, dur- 
ing which all we know of Joseph and his brethren is com- 
prised in these two verses: "And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, 
he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived a hundred and 
ten years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third 
generation '' — that is, as it seems to me, Ephraim's great-grand- 
children — "the children also of Machirthe son of Manasseh" 
— that is, Manasseh's grandchildren — " were brought up upon 
Joseph's knees.'' He lived ninety-three years in Egypt, and 
eighty of these were subsequent to his elevation to the sec- 
ond place in the kingdom. There were, probably, a succes- 
sion of Pharaohs on the throne, after the passing away of 
the monarch whom he had first served so signally during the 
time of famine ; and it is likely that to the last he retained 
the confidence and affection both of the royal family and of 
the people at large. But in the absence of any particulars 
we may not attempt to make history by conjecture. 

But the time drew nigh when he, too, must die, and this 



Joseph's Death. 215 

is the last record concerning him: "Joseph said unto his 
brethren, I die ; and God will surely visit you, and bring you 
out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, 
to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the 
children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye 
shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being 
a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and 
he w^as put in a coffin in Egypt." Not buried, as I judge, 
but embalmed and put into a mummy-case, which was kept 
in some one of the homes of his kindred. 

Now here we are struck at once with the resemblance of 
Joseph's words to those of Jacob in one part, and their dif- 
ference from them in another. Jacob said, *' Behold, I die; 
but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land 
of your fathers," just as Joseph said, "I die; and God will 
surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land 
which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." But 
while Jacob requested that his body should be at once buried 
in Machpelah, Joseph required that his bones should remain 
among the Israelites, and be taken w^ith them when they 
should go to Canaan. Both alike were animated by faith in 
the covenant and oath of God, that their descendants should 
possess the Promised Land, but Jacob showed his faith by ask- 
ing to be immediately buried in the sepulchre of his fathers, 
while Joseph manifested his by leaving his bones among his 
people, and giving commandment that they should be carried 
up with them out of Egypt. And if you will look at the dif- 
ference of situation between the two, you will find the expla- 
nation of the difference between the two requests. For Ja- 
cob and his sons had been already long in Canaan. It was 
natural for them, therefore, to dwell on the memories of the 
past ; and Jacob, by asking to be buried immediately in Mach- 
pelah, virtually said to his sons, "Do not forget Canaan in 
Egypt. Let not the prosperity of the present drown out of 



2i6 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

your heart all love for the past, or all longing for a return to 
its happiness. Keep alive the memory of the good land that 
is for the moment behind you ;" and for that purpose, know- 
ing how affection clusters round the sepulchre of a father, he 
had his body taken at once to Hebron. But when Joseph 
came to die, the majority of the descendants of Jacob had 
never seen Canaan. They had grown up in Egypt, and their 
danger was that of settling down there in contentment, with- 
out having any desire to go to the land of their fathers. 
Therefore, to keep alive among them the truth that they 
were yet to go to Canaan, and to preserve in the midst of 
them the evidence of his faith that they should ultimately 
possess that land, he left his body, embalmed, yet unburied, 
among them, with the instruction that when they did go, they 
should take it along with them. They say that at the feasts 
of Egypt it was usual to bring a mummy to the table, t^hat 
the guests might be reminded thereby of their mortality. 
But Joseph here left his coffined body to his people, that by 
its presence among them, and preservation by them, they 
might never forget that Egypt was not their final resting- 
place — their national home — and might be stimulated to hold 
themselves in constant readiness to arise and go to their own 
land. Thus, though the expression of the faith in the two 
cases was different, it was in each appropriate to the circum- 
stances of those to whom it was made. 

And now, how was this request of Joseph's fulfilled ? Read 
with me these two passages, and you will see : "And Moses 
took the bones of Joseph with him : for he had straitly sworn 
the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you ; and 
ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you."^ It was 
a terrible night. The destroying angel had passed through 
Egypt and laid low the first-born in every household. The 

* Exodus xiii., 19. 



Joseph's Death. 217 

panic-stricken Pharaoh had ordered the Israelites away at 
once, and they started in great haste. Yet even in that 
crisis they did not forget the descending obh'gation of tlie 
oath which their fathers had sworn to Joseph, and they took 
time to carry with them his remains. Read again: **And 
the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up 
out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground 
which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of 
Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver; and it became the 
inheritance of the children of Joseph."^ Thus, between the 
death and burial of Joseph an interval of probably from 
three to four hundred years elapsed, during all of which his 
remains were kept by the children of Israel, a witness to the 
faith by which he was animated, and a prophecy of their 
ultimate possession of the land of Canaan, so that the au- 
thor of the Epistle to the Hebrews had a right to say, '^ By 
faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing 
of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concern- 
ing his bones." f 

And now, leaving the character and career of Joseph to 
form the subject of a separate discourse, let us conclude by 
giving prominence to the lesson conveyed to us in these 
parting words, ''I die^ and God will surely visit youP They 
bring before us the contrast between the mortality of men 
and the eternity of God. They die, but he abides " the King 
eternal, immortal, the only wise God." Very strikingly is 
this fact illustrated in the sacred Scriptures, in which there 
is only one name that keeps its place in the forefront from 
the beginning to the end. For a time we read of Adam ; 
then of Noah ; then of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob ; 
then of Joseph ; then of Moses ; then of Joshua. After that 
we have the age of the Judges ; then that of the Kings and 

* Joshua xxiv., 32. t Hebrews xi., 22. 

10 



2i8 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

Prophets; then that of the Captivity; then that of the Res- 
toration, under Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Mal- 
achi. Then in the Xew Testament we have Apostles and 
Evangelists. But throughout we have over all the Living and 
Eternal God. One generation goeth and another cometh, 
but he abideth forever. This great man or that may give 
his name to an epoch, but God's providence is over all alike. 
He is in the Bible, as he is in the universe, omnipresent, giv- 
ing its unity to the Book, as he does to human history as a 
whole, and rounding it all out into that great circle whose 
ample circumference sweeps from '* Paradise Lost " to " Par- 
adise Regained." If, therefore, as we read these pages, we 
are continually oppressed with the mortality of man, and re- 
minded of the dirge of Moses— ''Thou carriest them away as 
with a flood: they are as a sleep; in the morning they are 
as grass that groweth up : in the morning it flourisheth and 
groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.'* 
"We spend our years as a tale that is told" — we are comfort- 
ed also with the great consolation, " Lord, thou hast been our 
dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or even thou hadst formed the earth and the 
world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.'' 

Nay more, by the course of the Bible history he lets us see 
that an individual life, however fragmentary or incomplete it 
may seem to be to human view, fits into his comprehensive 
plan and is not lived in vain. As we pass from one to an- 
other, and stand now by the dying Abraham, again by the 
departing Jacob, and still again by Joseph as he is passing 
away, we are not permitted to think of anyone man as indis- 
pensable ; but neither, on the other hand, are we allow^ed to 
suppose that their work has been in vain, for God is in and 
over all, and the life of every good man becomes a part of 
that great whole which is to be, at last, the revelation and 
vindication, as well as the consummation, of the mystery of 



Joseph's Death. 219 

Providence. We may have some little difficulty in seeing 
this in regard to ourselves, because the microscopic minute- 
ness of our individual parts does not give us a good oppor- 
tunity of observing their relation to other and larger inter- 
ests ; but we have no such perplexity in reference to those 
whose biographies are set before us in the Scriptures ; and 
standing as we do to-night beside the coffin of him whose 
history we have been studying, it is fitting that we should 
recognize the comforting fact that each one leaves his own 
little bit of work on the great edifice which God is rearing 
through the centuries, and which is to be at last for his own 
habitation through the Spirit. We lose sight of that amid 
the trivialities, as we account them, of our personal histories, 
and so God has put the lives of other men here, as it were, 
under the magnifying-glass of an inspired record, that from 
the very largeness of the scale we may be at no loss to dis- 
cover the point and value of the lesson. 

Now this truth is full of comfort, on the one hand to the 
dying servant of God, and on the other to the bereaved who 
are called to mourn his loss. It is full of comfort to the 
dying, for whatever of good he has done in the world shall 
not be lost when he is gone. In the words of the appro- 
priate inscription on the monument to the AVesleys in West- 
minster Abbe}^ " God buries the workers, but he carries on 
the work." When Moses dies, God has Joshua fully trained 
to take his place. When Elijah steps into the chariot that 
is to take him to glory, God has Elisha there in readiness to 
receive his falling mantle. When Stephen is stoned to death, 
Paul is prepared by God to take up his mission. Thus, 
though the man disappears, his work is carried forward and 
is, through the energizing influence of God's spirit, made 
operative all through the ages. The sower may die, but the 
seed which fell from his hands matures into a harvest which 
is reaped by others, and becomes in its turn the food of mul 



220 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

titudes and the germ of many harvests more. I stood once 
on a Highland hill in my native land, and marked a spot; 
upon the landscape greener than all else around. When I 
inquired into the reason, I learned that for many, many years 
there had been a village there, and that the gardens of the 
villagers so long under cultivation kept unwonted verdure 
still. So, through the operations of God's grace, the earth 
is greener where his servants have been at work, though 
the servants themselves have long since passed away. The 
operations of grace, like those of Nature, go on after men 
have died, because God lives to maintain them, and nothing 
done for him is ever allowed by him to come to nothing. So 
when we are called to leave the earth, the work in which we 
delighted shall not be lost. We die, but God lives ; and we 
may be sure that under his care it will flourish. Ay, perhaps 
the handful of corn which we have cast on the top of the 
mountains, amid many discouragements, and apparently on 
a barren soil, may spring up, so that *^the fruit thereof shall 
shake like Lebanon. '' And the same thing holds true of the 
loved ones whom we are called to leave on earth. God re- 
mains to take care of them, so that we may say to them as 
Joseph did to his kinsmen, " I die, but God will surely visit 
you.'^ Though he have no other legacy to leave them, the 
dying Christian can leave his God to his children, and is 
not that enough ? Earthly guardians may prove unfaithful 
to their trust, and may, through covetousness, rob the widow 
and the orphans who have been committed to their care; 
but " the Lord is mindful of his own,'*' and they who are 
his wards are always under his protection. They may have 
many hardships, and it may seem for a while as if he had 
forgotten them, just as the Israelites had hard bondage in 
the land of Egypt; but when "the tale of bricks is doubled 
then comes Moses,'' and he will not suffer them always to 
be oppressed. Therefore, when w^e are in departing, let us 



Joseph's Death. 221 

take comfort in the thought that the covenant of Jehovah is 
with us and with our children, and that he remains to keep 
that covenant with those whom we leave behind us. 

Then what consolation comes from the eternity of God to 
those who are bereaved? I have quoted already from the 
ninetieth Psalm, but its significance in this relation is too 
marked to be left out of sight. It was written by Moses in 
the wilderness, when he was depressed by the death of those 
who had reached man's estate when he led them out of 
Egypt. There came a time when he was left w^ellnigh alone 
of all his generation; and then he took his comfort out of 
the permanence of God, singing, "Lord thou hast been our 
dwelling-place in all generations ; from everlasting to ever- 
lasting thou art God,'' and by that he was upheld. We see 
the same thing in David's case; for not far from the close of 
his life, and when many of his early companions had gone 
into " the silent land," he wrote the eighteenth Psalm, in which 
he said, " The Lord liveth, and blessed be my Rock ; and let 
the God of my salvation be exalted." Yes, " the Lord liveth," 
therefore let us not refuse to be comforted when dear ones 
are taken from our side. He can sustain us and he tmlL 
He is as near us as he was when they were with us, and they 
were but the agents whom he used for our welfare. But he 
is not tied to any instrumentality, and he can guide, uphold, 
and bless by one as well as by another. He takes away the 
earthly prop that we may learn to lean the more thoroughly 
on himself. '^ He will surely visit us ;" yea, he will be ever 
with us, and when our death-hour comes w^e shall be with 
him. " Happy are the people who are in such a case ; yea, 
happy is the people whose God is the Lord." With these 
feelings in our hearts, we can surely give our hearty Amen 
to Paul's doxology, " Now unto the King eternal, immortal, 
invisible, the only w^ise God, be honor and glory for ever 
and ever. Amen." 



XV. 

THE CHARACTER AND CAREER OF JOSEPH. 
Gen. xlv., 8. 

THE history of Joseph, on the consideration of which we 
have been so long engaged, differs from all the others 
which are given at any length in the book of Genesis, in 
that we are permitted to follow it almost uninterruptedly 
from boyhood to old age. This is one secret of its charm, 
especially for young readers ; the rather, because the quali- 
ties which appear in him at first are seen only to grow with 
his growth and to strengthen with his strength. In him the 
adage was pre-eminently true that " the bo}^ is father of the 
man f and though his life had its trials and discouragements, 
the conflicts which he had to wage were all external. There 
was little in him of that antagonism between the spirit and 
the flesh of which the Christian apostle speaks. From the 
very first he seems to have been whole-heartedly on the side 
of God, and his struggles were not with himself in order to 
maintain that undivided allegiance, so much as they were 
with others because he was determined to preserve it. His 
character, indeed, was not perfect, but there was less of alloy 
in it than in that of most men. We see in it less of the al- 
ternation between good and evil, between strength and weat^ 
ness, than there is in the majority of those whose biographies 
are given us in this honest book. There is no wavering ir- 
resolution, no petulant impatience, no unscrupulous self- 
seeking ; and if he never rose to those heights of spiritual 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 223 

communion with his God to which Abraham and Jacob were 
exalted, he never sank to the depths of deceit into which 
both of these patriarchs sometimes descended. His career 
is uniquely interesting as that of a good boy who was not a 
weakling; that of a pious man who was not a business fail- 
ure ; and that of a great man who, in the glory of his exalta;- 
tion, did not outgrow the simplicity of his youth. 

In many of its features it bears a striking resemblance to 
that of Daniel at a later day. As Auberlen has said, "The 
one stands at the commencement, the other at the end of 
the Jewish history of revelation; they were both representa- 
tives of the true God and his people at heathen courts; both 
were exemplary in their pure walk before the Lord ; both 
were endowed with the gift of bringing into clear light the 
dim presentiments of- truth which express themselves among 
the heathen in God-sent dreams; both were gifted with mar- 
vellous wisdom and insight, and for this reason highly hon- 
ored among the nations.'' "^ But with this general resem- 
blance there were specific differences ; and it may be profit- 
able, in drawing this series of discourses to a close, to spend 
a little time in the attempt to analyze the character of Jo^ 
seph, and unfold, so far ^as we may, the secret both of its 
goodness and its greatness. 

Beginning at the beginning, we are at once impressed 
with his devotion to his father. The boy, early motherless, 
was taken, not for that reason alone, but also for the sake 
of Rachel herself, to his father's heart, and the intercourse 
between them seems to have been of the closest and most 
confidential kind ; indeed, there is something of idyllic beau- 
ty in the companionship of the two. We find the boy at 
home with his father when all his half-brothers were absent, 

* " Daniel and the Revelation," by C. A. Auberlen. Translated by 
Rev. A. Saphir, D.D., pp. 23, 24. 



2 24 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

and the coat of distinction which his father unwisely gave 
him was an indication of the love he bore him; while the 
commission to proceed to Shechem may be taken as an illus- 
tration of the kind of confidence which his father placed in 
him. Then, in the frank rehearsal of his dreams we have 
an exemplification, on the other hand, of the open and un- 
checked freedom with which Joseph was accustomed to 
deal with his father. Now, if we may regard these as typi- 
cal instances, they suggest a great deal more that is not re- 
corded. They permit us to believe that in their familiar fel- 
lowship Jacob would tell Joseph the chief events in his own 
personal history, and specially those chapters in it of which 
Bethel and Peniel w^ere the scenes. We are sure, too, that 
when the conversation on these subjects was exhausted the 
father and son would adjourn together to the tent of Isaac, 
to hear again from the lips of the blind old grandfather the 
story of that terrible experience on Moriah, when, through 
the arrested sacrifice of his own son, Abraham saw down 
through the ages into the mystery of Calvary. Revelation, 
then, was a personal privilege which he who received could 
share with others only through oral communication ; and so 
these stories heard by Joseph from the lips of Isaac and of 
Jacob were to him what the Bible now is to our children. 
Through them he learned to know of God, and so the thought 
of God became in his mind inseparably associated with his 
father. His father was all the dearer to him because of the 
revelation of God which he received through him, and he 
saw all the dearer to his father because of the readiness with 
which he accepted the truth thus communicated, and obeyed 
the Lord thus made known to him. Thus natural affection 
was sweetened, elevated, and purified by spiritual commun- 
ion, and it may be that the two were drawn together all the 
more closely by the fact that the other members of the fami- 
ly at that time seemed to care for none of these things. In 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 225 

any case, they were more to each other than either of them 
was to any of the rest. And when, after a long interval of 
separation, they were brought together again, the old footing 
between them was at once restored. We cannot quite un- 
derstand, indeed, the unbroken silence maintained by Joseph 
towards his father for so many years; but, whatever caused 
that, we are sure that it was no estrangement of heart from 
him, for when they saw each other again they rushed at once 
into each other's arms, and all the old tenderness came out 
between them. 

No matter how old a man he may be, the true son is al- 
ways a boy again when he is beside his father; and no mat- 
ter how venerable a man the son may be to others, his aged 
father still regards him as his boy. That is true to-day, and, 
thank God, it is a familiar truth to many of us ; but just be- 
cause of that we are all the more delighted to find an exem- 
plification of it here, in those visits paid by Joseph, when he 
was an Egyptian grandee, to his venerable sire. It is a beau- 
tiful trait, this filial devotion, as honorable to the father as it 
is to the son, and regarded, too, by God with benignant com- 
placency, for the precept " Honor thy father and thy mother " 
is "the first commandment with promise/' Let this then be 
the first of our lessons from the career of Joseph. Fathers, 
take your sons into friendly, confidential, religious fellow- 
ship with yourselves. Sons, cultivate companionship with 
your fathers, that you may learn what God has been to them, 
and he may become doubly precious to you as "your fa- 
ther's God." The covenant holds yet, and it counts for 
something to be a covenant child. 

But now, as the result of this fellowship with his father, 
and this reception of God's revelation through him, we mark 
next in Joseph a constant recognition of the presence of 
God with him. That, indeed, seems to me to be the one 
great, all-dominating consciousness of his life. He believed 



ll 



226 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

in God, not as afar off, but as always near; not as sitting 
aloof from all the actions of men, but as overruling and con- 
trolling them; not as an enemy to be feared, but as a friend 
to be loved and trusted and served. No persecution could 
keep him from realizing that God was with him, and no pros- 
perity could blind him to the fact that it was to God he owed 
it all. It seems to me, as I read his history, that it was a con- 
stant "walk with God." His faith had almost the strength 
of sight. That which his father wrestled for as a great priv- 
ilege, and enjoyed for but a brief season, in a 5pecial theoph- 
any, he seemed constantly to realize by faith, so that he 
could say, " I see God face to face and my life is preserved," 
Or if such a description appears extravagant, we may at least 
declare that what was true of Moses was true also of him, 
and that he not only "endured," but lived "as seeing him 
who is invisible." He felt that the Lord was round about 
him, and whatever men might intend he knew that God al- 
ways " meant it unto good." Now this faith in the constant 
presence of God with him enabled him to maintain that 
evenliness of disposition on which again and again we have 
remarked. It kept him from being either very much de- 
pressed by adversity, or exceedingly elated by prosperity. 
He did not indeed stoically take things good and bad as they 
came, neither did he accept them thoughtlessly as matters 
of course, but he received them as from the hand of God, 
and was confident that he would yet reveal to him the pur- 
pose for which he sent them. Hence, though his heart was 
wrung with anguish when he was cast into the pit, he did not 
indulge in unavailing regrets; and though "the iron entered 
into his soul " when he was in the dungeon, he was able pa- 
tiently to wait for God's time for his deliverance. 

But neither did he forget the Lord's hand in his prosperity. 
That was as undeserved byTilm^s his adversity had been. 
Both alike came from the Most High, and in both alike God 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 227 

''meant it unto good.'' So, while he was kept from despon^^ 
dency in the one experience, he was preserved from pride in 
the other. He was not self-poised but God-poised. The bal- 
ance of his nature was God. That kept him always in equi- 
librio, so that he was still the same man in simplicity, humil- 
ity, and calmness, whether he was ministering to the prison- 
ers in the round-house or riding in the second chariot of the 
king. God was with him in the dungeon, and that kept him 
from over-estimating its hardships ; God was with him in the 
chariot, and that kept him from over-estimating its honor. 
The affliction did not sour his heart, and the prosperity did 
not turn his head, because in both he felt that God was near 
him ; and when we get to such a faith as he had in the pres- 
ence and protection of a covenant God, we shall be able to 
preserve an equanimity like his. 

Nor must I forget to add here that this sense of the near- 
ness of God to him lay at the root of that moral courage 
with which he was endowed. He did not fear to tell of his 
brother's misdeeds, no matter how they might threaten him, 
for God was on his side; and when temptation assailed him 
he had no difficulty in resisting it, because he felt that God 
was near. " How shall I do this great wickedness and siri 
against God?" these were his words; and the sin was felt 
to be so heinous, not because God was present to take note 
of it, but because the God who was present had been his 
constant friend, and was his omnipotent protector. . 

So again he could enter in before Pharaoh without trepi- 
dation,, because he was always consciously in the presence 
of the King of kings; and he had no misgivings about un- 
dertaking the management of public affairs during the years 
of plenty and of famine, because he knew that the Lord would 
"stand by him and strengthen him." Brethren, there is 
nothing that so largely contributes to what is commonly 
called "presence of mind" in danger or in difficulty as this 



2 28 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

sense of the constant nearness of God to us. He who pos- 
sesses that faith has always God in reserve, and therefore 
he is always as calm as Elisha was in Dothan, and as cour- 
ageous as Daniel was before Darius. 

Still farther, Joseph^s constant recognition of the presence 
of God with him gave him patience to wait God's time, and 
V piety to take God's way for his promotion in life. Very early 
in life there came to him the divine premonition that there 
was a great future before him. It was not simply the con- 
sciousness that he had it *Mn him'' to do something noble, 
and attain to something exalted in the world. I acknowl- 
edge, indeed, that such feelings in many have been the proph- 
ecies of exaltation, and have so fired ambition that they have, 
so to say, become the means of their own fulfilment at a later 
date. But Joseph's early visions came to him directly from 
God. They were the same in kind as the divine communi- 
cations that were made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, 
and they were given to him in a manner that was special, 
and distinct from all ordinary forecasts of the future. But 
he did not try to help on their attainment by improper means, 
neither was he in eager haste to have them fulfilled. He 
let God take his time, and he did not seek, like Rebekah, to 
help him out in a sinful way. He "waited" on the Lord, 
and while he waited he worked just at what his hand found 
to do, and in a manner that was strictly irreproachable and 
upright. He vv^ould take no " short cuts " to success. He 
knew nothing of vaulting into greatness by some sudden and 
spasmodic leap, to be just as suddenly overturned because 
he was not fitted for the work to which he had aspired. 
But he kept plodding on, always doing his best, whether as a 
shepherd, or as a household steward, or as a prison warden : 
and so when he was called to be the Grand Vizier, he did 
his best there too, and it was such a ''best'' as piloted the 
country safely through a crisis which else might have re- 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 229 

suited in general starvation or in the wildest anarchy and 
confusion. 

But why was he always doing his best ? Because, as you 
may clearly see if you care to read between the lines of the 
record, he was always working for God. That kept him 
from indolence ; that prevented him from indulging in mur- 
muring impatience ; that preserved him from staining his 
record with anything like dishonesty or iniquity. To him, 
indeed, as to a greater than he or than all of us, long after- 
wards, the devil came and offered the kingdom and the glory 
if he would but fall down and worship him; for the strength 
of the temptation presented by Potiphar's wife, to such an 
one as he, lay not in its appeal to fleshly appetite so much 
as in the fact that it opened up a w^ay by. which he might 
speedily reach the summit of his ambition, while yet the thing 
required of him was not regarded in Egypt as any great 
enormity. But he spurned it from him, saying in another 
form, yet virtually what the Saviour said, " Get thee behind 
me, Satan, for I shall worship the Lord my God, and him 
only shall I serve f and he went back, to go a long way 
round, a way which led through a prison, and which took 
him years to traverse, but a way that led at length to unsul- 
lied greatness, which, once attained, was kept by him for life. 
Oh, young men, what an example there is here for you ! 
It tells you to keep ever alive within you the consciousness 
that God is at your side. It bids you remember that it is 
with God you have to do. It urges you to "make haste 
slowly;'' that is, to make haste in God's way, and never to 
f be guilty of doing evil that good may come. " Strait is the 
j gate and narrow is the w^ay " to the greatness that God con- 
^ fers. His path to honor and influence and power is still 
steep and arduous and rugged, and evermore, as you toil 
on and up, some emissary of the devil will come and sug- 
gest to you a shorter and easier way; but believe him not, 



230 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

for he will lead you through a swamp, in which it will go 
hard if you do not sink and disappear; or, if he give you 
what he promises, he will give it but for a little season, after 
which will come a sudden and irremediable collapse. You 
do not need to do more than read the newspapers of last 
week to see how true that is. Oh, that you would lay it to 
heart, and be content in your business as in your closet to 
** wait upon the Lord." " He that believeth " will make no 
such " haste " as that — he will bide God's time ; and if he 
can rise only by using the devil's means, he will be content 
to remain forever as he is and where he is ; for, after all, 
character is the real success, and the man who can say "no" 
to the devil is a hero, even if the saying of it should send 
him, in the first instance, to a jail. But commonly God does 
not leave such heroes in the dungeon, for after the prison 
comes the royal chariot, and it comes to stay, or, if it do not 
come on earth, there is in heaven a crown that fadeth not 
away. Serve God, then, where you are with constant dili- 
gence and unswerving loyalty, and leave all else to him. 

But, as another result of this constant sense of God's 
presence which Joseph cherished, I name his forgiving spir- 
it^ He had come to see that through all the evil that men 
intended to do him, God was w^orking towards his great good 
end, of setting him near the throne of Egypt, and saving 
much people alive, and so that made him ready to pardon 
his brothers for their cruel treatment of him in his early life. 
True, he took means to satisfy himself of their repentance, 
but when he was convinced of that he at once made himself 
known to them, and took them again to his heart. Now I 
Terily believe that if we had anything like Joseph's faith in 
the universality of God's providence we should find it more 
easy to forgive those who have done us wrong; and as that 
is one of the hardest things to do, it might be well for us to 
,cuUivate the faith which makes it easy. We are too ready 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 231 

to forgive with reservation. If, like David, we consent to 
Absalom's recall, we add the condition that he shall not look 
upon our face; and there is too much in us of the spirit of 
the Highland-man who, having been brought, on what was 
supposed to be his death-bed, to forgive a neighbor with 
whom he had a feud, and who had been led into his cham- 
ber for a formal reconciliation, called after him as he was 
leaving the room, " Mind, if I get better this will be all off!'' 
But Joseph forgave right out, and he did so because he 
knew that God had made the cruelty of his brothers to work 
out his good, and because he felt that God was a witness to 
his forgiving act. Now, when to these considerations we 
add this other — more clearly revealed to us than it was to 
Joseph — that God has forgiven us freely and fully all our 
sins, we ought to find it more blessed to give forgiveness 
than it is to receive it, and should have our delight in deal- 
ing with others as our God has dealt with us. 

Thus regarded, we see that the character of Joseph was in 
every particular the evolution of his realization of the near- 
ness of God and his faith in the universality of his provi- 
dence, and that for these he was indebted to the revelation 
that came to him in early life through Jacob and Isaac. 

I conclude with drawing attention to two points to which 
I gave prominence some years ago when I was speaking of 
the character of Daniel. The first is that Joseph's early 
piety was not incompatible with strength and manliness of 
character. I am particular to set that clearly before you, 
for it has come to be believed by the young people of these 
days that piety is a simpering, sentimental thing, betokening 
the existence both of physical and mental weakness in him 
by whom it is manifested. Something of this impression per- 
haps may be due to the influence of those books for juve- 
niles which tell of " good boys " who had little or nothing of 
boyhood about them, and dropped into early graves. Thus 



232 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

the idea is fostered that when one becomes an earnest Chris- 
tian in the years of his boyhood, he is *'too good for this 
world," and is removed as soon as may be to a better. Now 
such books are unhealthy, because they are untrue ; and the 
mischief is that they tend to repel their readers from religion 
altogether. Young people do not want to become Christians 
if their histories are to be of that sort. They are conscious 
of the possession of overflowing vitality, and they have, be- 
sides, the natural and laudable ambition to do something to 
purpose in the world. They shrink, therefore, from a life of 
physical weakness and from an early death, and they should 
be told of the early piety of those who have lived to a good 
old age, and who were honored to do good and noble service 
for God and their generation. Now that is what they find 
in the biography of Joseph, for he gave himself to God as a 
boy, but lived to be an hundred and ten years old, and for 
more than three-fourths of his days he occupied the second 
place in the land of Egypt. There was no element of fee- 
bleness about him. He was healthy alike in body and in 
mind. He had the courage not only to have convictions, 
but also to act upon them. He was a manly boy, and, as we 
have seen, there was to the last also much of the boy even in 
his manhood. Now I am anxious that the young people of 
my audience should take heed to these things. You will 
make a tremendous mistake if you suppose that piety unfits 
you for life, or imagine that its existence in youth is an ab- 
normal thing which indicates the presence of disease. Be- 
lieve me, there is nothing so wdiolesome for you as to give 
yourselves early to the Lord. It will lay in you the founda- 
tion of a vigorous and energetic character. It will bring the 
highest and holiest of all motives to bear alike on education, 
recreation, and business, and enable you to make the very 
best of yourselves for God and for your fellow-men. From 
every point of view, therefore, such a history as this of Jo- 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 233 

seph should encourage you to early piety. It bids you con- 
secrate yourselves to the Saviour ere yet " the cares of the 
world" or "the deceitfulness of riches'' have stolen away 
your hearts. It proves to you that piety is by no means 
incompatible with manliness. It gives you the promise of 
many days of usefulness and honor in the world, and illus- 
trates how truly Paul did write when he said, "Godliness is 
profitable unto all things, having the promise both of the 
life that now is, and also of that which is to come." 

Finally, I desire to place fully in your view this other fact, 
namely, that Joseph, even in the world's sense of the word, 
was a successful man. He had his struggles and his trials, 
but stiTl,^ at the early age of thirty, he reached a position of 
honor and emolument which was second only to that of the 
Egyptian monarch, and he retained that, so far as appears, 
to the end. Now, of course, his was in some respects an 
exceptional case. But it was not exceptional in this, that 
though a good man, he became a successful man, for in the 
word of God we have similar instances in the lives of Daniel 
and Nehemiah ; and in our own day and in our own land 
we can point to not a few who are equally remarkable for 
their Christian character and their business eminence. It 
is, I know, a common idea among many that religion and 
success, commercial or professional, are incompatible. If 
one have the reputation of being a godly man, he is by mul- 
titudes written down as unfitted for attaining the highest kind 
of commercial success; and, on the other hand, if one have 
risen to eminence as a merchant or a statesman, it is sup- 
posed that he cannot be a very devout maru But I cannot 
admit that either of these imputations is true. Why should 
the cultivation of the heart be inconsistent with eminence in 
commerce or in public life, any more than the gratification 
of a taste for literature ?_ Yet how many men are equally 



234 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

eminent in both departments. The noblest statesman that 
Great Britain has seen for more than a generation has been 
able, without detracting from his influence either as a finan- 
cial reformer or as a prime-minister, to cultivate Homeric 
studies and enrich literature by many valuable essays. Nay, 
I will add that he is as eminent as a Christian as he is in 
either of the other two respects, so that in his case also the 
cultivation of the heart has been as little incompatible with 
his greatness as his devotion to literature. 

But, more than this, the very duties of business furnish an 
opportunity for the fostering of religion. For what is religion? 
Is it not, above all other things, the science of character? 
Is it not the process of self-formation according to the purest 
model, from the loftiest motives, and with the best assistance? 
And if that be so, does not public life give the noblest op- 
portunities for its prosecution? Whatever w^e do, and wher- 
ever we are, we are either making or manifesting character, 
and we must do so either in the right way or in the wrong. 
Religion is the doing of this in the right way, and if that be 
incompatible with success in business, then all I have to say 
is, so much the worse for business. But it is not incompati- 
ble with business success. It may not give a rapid fortune^ 
indeed, but that is not a misfortune, for these rapid fortunes 
often end in prison or in exile. But it has often given, and 
it will give again, solid, substantial, enduring prosperity, 
which no panic can sweep away. Nor is this all. Consider 
what religion does for a man. It brings him under the in- 
fluence of the most powerful motives; it opens his eyes to 
the sight of the invisible ; it leads him to work, as Joseph 
did all through, wdth the consciousness that God is at his 
side. But is there anything in that to paralyze industry or 
to overlay diligence? Nay, verily, for he who is doing busi- 
ness for God will always be in earnest. His diligence in 



The Character and Career of Joseph. 235 

business will be a part of his religion, and he will enjoy the 
fulfilment of the promise, ^^ the hand of the diligent maketh 
rich/' True, his religion will keep him from all double deal- 
ing and dishonesty, and so he may not rise as rapidly as the 
wicked sometimes do, but then neither will he fall so igno- 
miniously as they. 

Believe not, therefore, my young friends, that your alle- 
giance to God will interfere with true, abiding, commercial 
success. Even if it were to do so, it would still be your duty 
to be true to God. But it will not. God's providence is 
moral, and if you make a fair induction of facts, you will find 
that, other things being equal, the religious man is all in all, 
and, in the long-run, the most prosperous as well as the hap- 
piest of merchants. I know that this is a low view of the 
matter, but I know, also, that the insinuations to which I 
have referred are made by those who would seduce you from 
the paths of integrity, and therefore I have taken the trouble 
to refute their reasoning. Do not allow yourselves to be led 
away by their plausibilities. Probe them to the bottom and 
you will see their falsity; and remain true to him who has 
said, not onh^ "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall 
see God," but also, "Blessed are the meek for they shall in- 
herit the earth." 

And now I conclude. When I began these discourses I 
was afraid to touch that exquisite story which was the favorite 
of our childhood, lest I should dim its beauty or destroy its 
charm. But it has become only the more interesting as we 
have examined it the more minutely; and the lessons which 
we have found in it have been so important that I am not 
without the hope that multitudes among us have been per- 
manently benefited by their consideration. In such a case 
the profit is yours, the joy is mine, and the praise is God's. 
Two things I trust we have learned. These are, to value 
above all others this ancient book, which, given by inspira- 



236 Joseph the Prime-minister. 

tion of God, has been found to be "profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,'' 
and to resolve that we will suffer no mousing criticism to 
nibble away from us the precious histories which are therein 
recorded. 



INDEX. 



Affliction disposes to sympathy, 72. 
Anderson, Lieutenant, quoted, 25. 
Andrews, Bishop, quoted, 175. 
Asher, blessing of, 182. 
Auberlen, C. A., quoted, 223. 

Baker, chief, 62 ; dream of, 66 ; execution of, 68. 

Baker, Sir Samuel, quoted, 34. 

Beginning of sin, 29. 

Beheading, death by, 68. 

Beneficiaries, short memories of, 74. 

Beni Hassan, representation on one of the tombs at, 12. 

Benjamin not sent with his brothers to Egypt at first, 109 ; presence of, 
insisted on by Joseph, 113; received by Joseph, 126; Joseph's cup 
found in sack of, 129; intercession of Judah for, 129, 135; blessing 
of, by Jacob, 185. 

Binney, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 88, 89, 94. 

Birthday celebrations among the Egyptians, 69. 

Browne, Bishop, quoted, 182. 

Bruce, Michael, quoted, 169. 

Brugsch, quoted or referred to, 38, 40, 85, 98. 

Burial, Egyptian, manner of, 195. 

Bushnell, Horace, D.D., quoted, 69. 

Business, important, should be done at once, 167. 

Butler, chief, dream of, 61; dream of, and its fulfilment, 66; forgets Jo- 
seph, 68 ; speaks of Joseph to Pharaoh, 82. 

Calling, an honest, not a thing to be ashamed of, 149. 

Campbell, Thomas, quoted, 171. 

Captain of the guard, 43, 61. 

Captivities, various kinds of, 45 ; what to do in, 47. 

Chabas, M., quoted, 37, 40, 161. 

Charon, origin of fable of, 195, 

Character the true success in life, 60 ; relation of, to God's providence, 

70, 71 ; often tested when we do not know it, 132. 
Cisterns in Palestine, 25. 



238 Index. 

Commentary, Bishop Ellicott's, quoted, 155. 

Pulpit, 125 ; Jamieson, Fausset, and Browne, quoted, ^"j, 197. 

*' Commentary, Speaker's," quoted, 85, 87, 89, 102, 178, 179. 
Contemporary Revieiu quoted, 37-40, 161. 
Cooke, Canon, quoted, 85. 
Corn policy of Joseph, 98-103. 

Dan, blessing of, by Jacob, 180. 

Diodorus referred to, 99, 195. " 

Devotion of Joseph to his father, 213. 

Dods, Marcus, D.D., quoted, 58, 65, 138. 

Donellan Lectures, by William Lee, D.D., quoted, 155, 156. 

Dothan, 22. 

Dreams, 63. 

Ebers referred to, 66. 

Egypt, extent of, 33 ; name of, 33 ; inhabitants of, 36 ; early history of, 

36; manners and customs of, 49, (}(), 80, 86, 125, 144. 
Egyptian wagons, 142. 
Egyptian words in Genesis, 85. 
Envy, course of, 20 ; nature of, 29. 
Ephraim, birth of, 92 ; blessed by Jacob, 162. 
Eternity of God a comfort in bereavement, 217-221. 

Faber, F. W., quoted, 60. 

Fairbairn's ''Imperial Bible Dictionary" quoted, 44, 154. 

Faith, importance of, in death, 169. 

Famines in Egypt, 96-98 ; causes of, 108. 

Father and son, intercourse between, 224, 

Favoritism, evil of, in the family, 14. 

Forgiveness, difficulty of, 207. 

Forgiving spirit of Joseph, 230. 

Gad, blessing of, 18 r. 

Gathered to his fathers, meaning of, 190. 

Geike, Cunningham, D.D., quoted, 66, 67, 68. 

Genesis, different sections in the book of, 9 ; Egyptian words in, 85. 

Goshen, Land of, 145. 

Grave, locality of the, unimportant, 159. 

Greeley, Horace, advice of, 149. 

Hanna, Dr. William, quoted, 8. 
Henry, Matthew, quoted, 55. 
Herodotus referred to, 99. 
" Herodotus," Rawlinson's, quoted, 197. 
Hyksos, or Shepherd kings of Egypt, 37. 



Index. 239 

Intercession of Judah for Benjamin, 129, 135. 

Intercourse between a father and a grown-up son, 165, 167. 

Interpretation of the dream of the chief butler and chief baker, 67 ; of 
the dreams of Pharaoh, 83. 

Inundation of the Nile, 34. 

Isaac some years contemporary with Joseph, 9 ; probable effect of inter- 
course with, on Joseph, 10 ; encampment of, at Hebron, 10. 

Issachar, blessing of, 179, 188. 

Jacob, effect of Peniel upon, 7 ; goes to Shechem, 8 ; encampment of, at 
Hebron, 11 ; gives a peculiar dress to Joseph, 12; sends Joseph to 
seek his brothers, 21 ; sends his ten sons to Egypt for food, 109 ; la- 
ments over the absence of Simeon, 116; sends his sons a second* 
time to Egypt, 123 ; removal of, with his family, to Egypt, 142 ; halt 
of, at Beersheba, 143 ; met by Joseph, 143 ; interview of, with Pha- 
raoh, 145, 147 ; visited by Joseph alone, 158 ; requests to be buried in 
Machpelah, 159; reasons of, for this request, 160; takes an oath of 
Joseph, 160 ; blesses Ephraim and Manasseh, 162 ; faith of, 164, 169 ; 
blesses his sons, 171-189 ; death of, 190 ; embalmment of the body of, 
196; burial of, 201; character of, 201; contrasted with that of King 
Saul, 203. 

Joseph contemporary with Isaac for some years, 10; receives a peculiar 
coat from Jacob, 12 ; brings to his father the evil report of his broth- 
ers, 12 ; dreams of, 13 ; antagonism of his brothers to, 15 ; sent to 
seek his brothers, 21 ; reception of, by his brothers, 23 ; put into a 
pit, 25 ; sold to the Ishmaelites, 26 ; first position of, in Egypt, 42 ; 
purchased by Potiphar, 43 ; time of service with Potiphar, 48; tempta- 
tion . of, 49-5 1 ; triumph of, 51; in the prison, 52; interprets the 
dreams of the chief butler and the chief baker, 67 ; waiting in the 
prison, 76-79 ; sent for, by Pharaoh, 80 ; in the presence of the king, 
83 ; interprets Pharaoh's dreams, S^ ; promoted to the second place 
in the kingdom, 84 ; receives a new name, 85 ; feelings of, at the birth 
of his children, 91, 92 ; forgetfulness of his father by, 93 ; corn policy 
of, 98-103; reception of his brothers by, no; conceals his relation- 
ship from his brothers, 111-114; keeps Simeon as a hostage, 115; 
receives his brothers on their second visit, 125; explanation of his 
conduct to his brothers, in, 127; divining cup of, 128; tender re- 
gard of, for Jacob, 139 ; makes himself known to his brothers, 140 ; 
sends his brothers back to Canaan, 140; receives his father in Egypt, 
114; visits his father alone, 158; visits his father with his two sons, 
132; receives a special portion from his father, 165; blessing of, by 
Jacob, 183; buries his father at Machpelah, 201 ; returns to Egypt, 
206; character of, not understood by his brothers, 208; equanimity 
of, 213; gives commandment concerning his remains, 215; charac- 
ter and career of, 222 ; devotion of, to his father, 223 ; recognition 
of the constant presence of God by, 225 ; moral courage of, 227 ; 



240 Index. 

patience of, 228; forgiving spirit of, 230; piety of, 231; success 
of, 233. 

ICalisch quoted, 125. 

Kitto, Dr. John, quoted, 43, 52, 108. 

Lake, sacred, 195. 

Lange's Genesis quoted, 29. 

Lawson, George, D.D., quoted, 19. 

Lee, Dr. W., Donellan Lectures quoted, 156, 157. 

Lepsius referred to, 40. 

Levi, blessing of, 175. 

Lewis, Tayler, quoted, 29. 

Life, brevity of, 151. 

Life, outer, different from inner, 134. 

Manasseh, birth of, 9 ; blessed by Jacob, 162. 

Machpelah, Cave of, request of Jacob to be buried in, 159; description 

of mosque above, 198; burial of Jacob in, 198. 
Moral courage of Joseph, 227. 
Mourning, Egyptian, 197. 

Nablus, 20, 165. 

Naphtali, blessing of, 182. 

Nile, sources of the, 34; inundation of the, explained, 35 ; importance 

of the, to Egypt, 36, 81. 
Nile, the Black, 34; the Blue, 34; the White, 34 

Patience of Joseph, 228. 

Peniel, effect of night at, upon Jacob, 7. 

Pharaoh sends for Joseph, 80 ; dreams of, 81 ; exalts Joseph to the sec- 
ond place, 84 ; receives Jacob, 145. 

Piety of Joseph not incompatible with strength and manliness, 231. 

Plan of God in every man's life, 69, 70. 

Poole, R. S., quoted, 37-40. 

Potiphar purchases Joseph, 43 ; captain of the guard, 43. 

Potiphar's wife the temptress of Joseph, 49 ; falsely accuses Joseph, 52. 

Prayer a support in trial, 121. 

Providence, minute particularity of, 69, 210; relation of character to, 70, 
71,186; works through men's sins, 79, 211; and through trial, 119; 
is not to be judged of before the time, 120. 

Public administration of Joseph, 98-103. 

Purposes of God helped towards fulfilment by men's efforts to defeat 
them, 30. 

Rachel, reference of Jacob to, on his death-bed, 163. 



Index. 241 

Recognition of God's presence by Joseph, 225. 

Residence, change of, to be made with the sanction of God, 148. 

Responsibility for what we see and hear in others, 17; not got rid of by 

l^utting the trust out of sight, 31. 
Reuben, effort of, to save Joseph, 23 ; grief of, at the failure of his plan, 

27, 115 ; offer of, to bring Benjamin back, 124; blessing of, 174. 
Right to be done irrespective of consequences, 60. 
Robinson, Rev. Dr. Edward, quoted, 100. 

Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 59. 

Shakespeare quoted, 20, 64, 1 11. 

Shechem described, 8, 20. 

Shepherds, Egyptian, prejudice against, 144. 

Shiloh, meaning of, 177. 

Simeon retained by Joseph, 114; restored, 126; blessing of, 175, 186. 

Sin, beginning of, 29. 

Slave market, Joseph in the, 42. 

Smith's *' Dictionary of the Bible" quoted, 22, 41,97. 

Smith, Rev. Thornley, 98, 108, 142, 194. 

*' Speaker's Commentary" quoted, 85, 87, 99, 102, 178, 179. 

Staff, bowing on the, meaning of, 38, 161, 162. 

Stanley, Dean, 199. 

Success in life, true, 60, 89; way to, not closed against any man, 87. 

Table, genealogical, in Gen. xlvi., 8-27, 153. 

Taylor, Isaac, quoted, iii. 

Temptation, how to meet, 54. 

Temptation of Joseph, 49-51; general lessons from the, 53-60. 

Tennyson quoted, 191, 192. 

Thomson, W. H., M.D., LL.D., quoted, 178, 185. 

Thomson, W. M., D.D., quoted, 21, 22, 25. 

Tower of London, illustration from, 74. 

Trench, Archbishop, quoted, 204, 205. 

Uncertainties of human existence, 28. 

Wagons, Egyptian, 142. 

Wilberforce, Bishop, quoted, 203. 

Wilkinson, Sir J. G., quoted, 49, 66, 80, S6, 125, 144, 193, 194, 196. 

Will, importance of making a, 168. 

Words, Egyptian, in Genesis, 85. 

ZAPHNATH-rAANEAH, meaning of, 85. 
Zebulon, blessing of, 179. 

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First Book and Selections. By F. A. March, LL.D. — Athenagoras. Edited by 
F. A. March, LL.D.— Tertullian's Select Works. Edited by F. A. March, LL.D. 
—The Apologies of Justin Martyr. With an Introduction and Notes. By B. L. 
GlLDERSLEEVE, Ph.D. (Gott.), LL.D. 



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'' FROM DA:N^ to BEERSHEBA ;" or, The Land of Promise as it now 
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GREEK NEW TESTAMENT CONCORDANCE. The Englishman's 
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A SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN RHETORIC, for the Use of Preachers 
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SCHAFF'S CREEDS OF CHRISTENDOM. With a History and Critical 
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THOMSON'S GREAT ARGUMENT. The Great Argument; or, Jesus 
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TRISTRAM'S LAND OF MOAB : Travels and Discoveries on the East 
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